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/ •== Entered at the Post tTiTce, New Y>>ru, JN. V., as secorKt^cTasa matter.: 
\ Copyright 1886. by 0. A. Dunham. All right* re*~ 



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Teutonic was the origin 
Of Gretchen Hindersnitchen, e 

Beneath the stairs she scoured tin. 
Her sphere was in the kitchen. 

Devotedly attached was she 
To those who paid her wages : 

An expert in fidelity 
In all its various stages. 

It chanced her mistress had a son, 

Who reprobate was proving ; 
Who in the paths that youth should shun 

Incessantly kept moving. 

Of him there came bad news one day,— 

He'd lost his situation, 
And Gretchen heard her mistress say, 

Had soiled his reputation. 

" Oh ! wretched day," the mother sighed ; 

" Would I had never seen it ; 
His reputation now is dyed, 

And we can never clean it." 

This plaintive wail good Gretchen heard, 

And joined the lamentation ; 
She understood all but one word, 

That word was reputation. 

"Madam," she said, " shustlook od here, 

Und keep a-lookin' shteady, 
Dot ting" must be most awful quveer 

Vat dis wont clean already ! 

" De bessest stuff I ever seen ; 

Mit twenty rubs or tirty. 
It makes dot rebutation clean. 

Or else it moost shtay dirty." 

Now Gretchen's simple mind evinced 

Unusual penetration ; 
" Sapolio," * she felt convinced, 

Would clean a reputation. 



-rBwfc 



* What is Sapolio ? It is a solid, handsome cake of scouring' soap, 
which has no equal for all cleaning purposes except the laundry. To 
Qse it is to value it. 

What will Sapolio do? Why.it will clean paint, make oil cloths 
Wight, and give the floors, tables and shelves a new appearance. 

It will take the grease off the dishes and off the pots and pans, 
on can scour the knives and forks with it, and make the tin things 
^Ine brightly. The wash basin, the bath tub, even the greasy kitchen 

'vwiir be as clean as a new pin, if you use Sapolio. One cake will 

•eaU^we say. Be a clever housekeeper and try it. 

Beware of imitations. There is but one Sapolio. 



•'OCH MORGAN'S SONS CO., NEW YORK. 



^ 



4-0 4- 



OWLET'S ESSAYS. 



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*What is fe 
which has no e^~«* *^ 
aae it is to value it. 

What will Sapolio do? \ 
wight, and give the floors, table.. 

It will take the grease off th* 
on can scour the knives and fork, ,_ 
*>ine brightly. The wash basin, the bath w 

\jwdlT be as clean as a new pin, if you ust 

*eMl,we say. Be a clever housekeeper and try lu. 

Beware of imitations. There is but one Sapolio. 



•'OCH MORGAN'S SONS CO., NEW YOI 



ESSAYS; 



BT 



ABRAHAM COWLEY. 




CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited 
739 & 741 Broadway New York. 



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INTRODUCTION. 



Abraham Cowley was the son of Thomas Cowley, 
stationer, and citizen of London in the parish of St. 
Michael le Querne, Cheapside. Thomas Cowley signed 
his will on the 24th of July, 1618, and it was proved 
on the 11th of the next month by his widow, Thomasine 
He left six children, Peter, Audrey, John, "William, 
Katherine, and Thomas, with a child unborn for whom 
the will made equal provision with the rest. The 
seventh child, born before the end of the same year, 
was named Abraham, and lived to take high place 
among the English Poets. 

The calm spirit of Cowley's " Essays " was in all his 
life. As he tells us in his Essay " On Myself," even 
when he was a very young boy at school, 'nstead of 
running about on holidays and playing with his fellows, 
he was wont to steal from them and walk into the 
fields, either alone with a book or with some one 
companion, if he could find any of the same temper. 
He wrote verse when very young, and says, " I believe 
I can tell the particular little chance that filled nr; 
head first with such chimes of verse as have never sine 
left ringing there ; for I remember when I began t 
read and to take some pleasure in it, there was woi 
to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by wh;, 
accident, for she herself never in her life read an 
book but of devotion), but there was wont to J 
Spenser's works." The delight in Spenser waker 



INTRODUCTION. 



all the music in him, and in 1628, in his tenth year, 
wrote a " Tragical Historie of Pyramus and Thisbe." 

In his twelfth year Cowley wrote another piece, also 
in sixteen stanzas, with songs interspersed, which was 
placed first in the little volume of Poetical Blossoms, 
by A. C, published in 1633. It was a little quarto 
of thirty- two leaves, with a portrait of the author, taken 
at the age of thirteen. This pamphlet, dedicated to 
the Dean of Westminster, and with introductory verses 
by Cowley and two of his schoolfellows, contained 
" Constantia and Philetus," with the " Pyramus and 
|Thisbe," written earlier, and three pieces written later, 
, two Elegies and " A Dream of Elysium." The 
iscription round the portrait describes Cowley as a 
ling's Scholar of Westminster School; and " Pyramus 
id Thisbe" has a special dedication to the Head 
ster, Lambert Osbalston. As schoolboy, Cowley 
us that he read the Latin authors, but could not 
ide to learn, grammar rules by rote. He was a 
fce at his school in 1636 for a scholarship at 
(Cambridge, but was not elected. In that year, how- 
ever, he went to Cambridge and obtained a scholarship 
| at Trinity. 

Cowley carried to Cambridge and extended there his 
reputation as boy poet. In 1636 the " Poetical Blos- 
soms" were re-issued with an appendix of sixteen 
lore pieces under the head of " Sylva." A third 
Idition of the " Poetical Blossoms " was printed in 
337 — the year of Milton's " Lycidas " and of Ben 
mnson's death. Cowley had written a five-act 
istoral comedy, "Love's Riddle," while yet at 
Jhool, and this was published in 1638. In the same 
1638, when Cowley's age was twenty, a Latin 
ledy of his, "Naufragium Joculare," was acted by 
in. of his College, and in the same year printed, with 
edication to Dr. Comber, Dean of Carlisle, who was 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

Master of Trinity. The poet Bichard Crashaw, who 
was about two years older than Cowley, and, having 
entered Pembroke Hall in 1632, became a Fellow of 
Peterhouse in 1637, sent Cowley a June present of two 
unripe apricots with pleasant verses of compliment on 
his own early ripeness, on his April- Autumn : — 

"Take them, and me, in them acknowledging 
How much my Summer waits upon thy Spring." 

Cowley was able afterwards to help Crashaw materially, 
and wrote some lines upon his early death. 

In 1639 Cowley took the degree of B.A. In 1640 
he was chosen a Minor Fellow, and in 1642 a Major 
Fellow, of Trinity, and he proceeded to his M.A. in 
due course. In March, 1641, when Prince Charles 
visited Cambridge, a comedy called " The Guardian," 
hastily written by Cowley, was acted at Trinity College 
for the Prince's entertainment. Cowley is said also 
to have written during three years at Cambridge the 
greater part of his heroic poem on the history of David, 
the " Davideis." One of the occasional poems written 
at this time by Cowley was on the early and sudden 
death of his most intimate friend at the University, 
William Hervey, to whom he was dearer than all but 
his brothers and sisters, and, says Cowley : 

" Even in that we did agree, 
For much above myself I loved them too." 

Hervey and Cowley had walked daily together, and 
had spent nights in joint study of philosophy and 
poetry. Hervey "had all the light of youth, of the* 
fire none." 

" With as much zeal, devotion, piety, 
He always lived as other saints do die. 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

Still with his soul severe account he kept, 
Weeping all debts out ere he slept ; 
Then down in peace and innocence he lay, 

Like the sun's laborious light, 

Which still in water sets at night, 
Unsullied with the journey of the day." 
/ 

Cowley's friendship with this family affected the 
course of his life. He received many kindnesses from 
his friend's brother John Hervey, including introduc- 
tion to Henry Jermyn, one of the most trusted friends 
of Queen Henrietta Maria, the friend who was created 
by her wish Baron Jermyn of St. Edmondsbury, who 
was addressed by Charles I. as " Harry," and was 
created by Charles II., in April, 1660, Earl of St. 
Albans. He was described in Queen Henrietta's time 
by a political scandal-monger, as " something too ugly 
for a lady's favourite, yet that is nothing to some." 
In 1643 Cowley was driven from Cambridge, and went 
to St. John's College, Oxford. To Oxford at the end 
of that year the king summoned a Parliament, which 
met on the 22nd of January, 1644. This brought to 
Oxford many peers and Royalists, who deserted the 
Parliament at Westminster for the king's Parliament 
at Oxford. It continued to sit until the 16th of April, 
by which time the king had found even his own Parlia- 
ment to be in many respects too independent. In 1644 
the queen, about to become a mother, withdrew to 
Exeter from Oxford, against which an army was ad- 
vancing ; and the parting at Oxford proved to be the 
last between her and her husband. A daughter was 
born at Exeter on the 16th of June. Within two weeks 
afterwards the advance of an army towards Exeter 
caused the queen to rise from her bed in a dangerous 
state of health, and, leaving her child in good keeping, 
escape to Plymouth, where she reached Pend^nnis 
CJastle on the 29th of June. On the 2nd of July the 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

king's forces were defeated at Marston Moor. On the 
14th of July the queen escaped from Falmouth to Brest. 
After some rest at the baths of Bourbon, she went on to 
Paris, where she was lodged in the Louvre, and well 
cared for. Jermyn was still her treasurer, her minister, 
and the friend for whose counsel she cared most. 

It was into the service of this Lord Jermyn that Cowley 
had been introduced through his friendship with the 
Herveys. He went to Paris as Lord Jermyn's secre- 
tary, had charge of the queen's political correspondence, 
ciphered and deciphered letters between Queen Hen- 
rietta and King Charles, and was thus employed so 
actively under Lord Jermyn that his work filled all 
his days, and many of his nights. He was sent also 
on journeys to Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, or 
wherever else the king's troubles required his attend- 
ance. In 1647 Cowley published his volume of forty- 
four love poems, called " The Mistress." * He was him- 
self no gallant, neither paid court to ladies, nor married. 
His love poetry was hypothetical; and of his life at 
this time he says : " Though I was in a crowd of as good 
company as could be found anywhere ; though I was 
in business of great and honourable trust ; though 1 
ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best convenience 
for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a 
man of my condition in banishment and public distresses, 
yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school- 
boy's wish in a copy of verses to tke same effect : — 

" ' Well, then, I now do plainly see 

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree,' &c, 

and I never then proposed to myself any other advan- 
tage from his Majesty's happy restoration, but the 
getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the 
country, which I thought, in that case, I might easily 
have compassed, as well as some others who, with no 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to 
extraordinary tortures." 

In 1654 Queen Henrietta, under influence of a new 
confessor, had left the Louvre, and, with the little 
daughter born at Exeter, taken up her quarters in a 
foundation of her own, at Ohaillot, for nuns of the 
visitation of St. Mary. Lord Jermyn having little 
use left for a secretary in Paris, Cowley in 1656, after 
twelve years' service in France, was sent to England 
that he might there live in the retirement he preferred, 
and with the understanding that he would be able to 
send information upon the course of home affairs. In 
England he was presently seized by mistake for another 
man, and, when his name and position were known, he 
was imprisoned, until a friendly physician, Sir Charles 
Scarborough, undertook to be security in a thousand 
pounds for his good conduct. In this year, 1656, 
Cowley published the first folio volume of his Poems, 
prepared in prison, and suggested, he said, by his 
finding, when he returned to England, a book called 
"The Iron Age," which had been published as his, 
and caused him to wonder that any one foolish enough 
to write such bad verses should yet be so wise as to 
publish them under another man's name. Cowley 
thought then that he had taken leave of verse, which 
needed less troubled times for its reading, and a mind 
less troubled in the writer. He left out of his book, 
he said, the pieces written during the Civil War, in- 
cluding three books of the Civil War itself, reaching 
as far as the first battle of Newbury. These he had 
burnt, for, he said, " I would have it accounted no less 
unlawful to rip up old wounds than to give new ones." 
" When the event of battle and the unaccountable 
Will of God has determined the controversy, and that 
we have submitted to the will of the conqueror, we 
must lay down our pens as well as arms." The first 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

part of this folio contained early poems ; the second 
part " The Mistress ; " the third part "Pindaric Odes ; " 
and the fourth and last his " Davideis." 

In September of the following year, 1657, Cowley 
acted asjj best man to George Yilliers, Duke of Buck- 
ingham, on his marriage at Bolton Percy, to Fairfax's 
daughter ; Cowley wrote also a sonnet for the bride. 
In December he obtained, by influence of friends, the 
degree of M.D. from the University of Oxford, and 
retired into Kent to study botany. Such study caused 
him then to write a Latin poem upon Plants, in six 
books : the first two on Herbs, in elegiac verse; the next 
two on Flowers, in various measures ; and the last two 
on Trees, in heroic numbers : — " Plantarum, Libri VI" 

After the death of Cromwell, Cowley returned to 
France, but he came back to England in 1660, when he 
published an " Ode on His Majesty's Restoration and 
Return," and "A Discourse by way of Yision con- 
cerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell." He 
was admitted, as Dr. Cowley, among the first members 
of the Royal Society then founded; but he was ex- 
cluded from the favour of the king. He had written 
an " Ode to Brutus," for which, said his Majesty, it 
was enough for Mr. Cowley to be forgiven. A noble 
lord replied to Cowley's Ode, in praise of Brutus, with 
an Ode against that Rebel. Cowley's old friend, 
Lord Jermyn, now made Earl of St. Alban's, joined, 
however, with George Yilliers, Duke of Buckingham, 
in providing for the poet all that was required to secure 
to him the quiet life that he desired. Provision to 
such end had been promised him both by Charles I. 
and Charles II., in the definite form of the office of 
Master of the Savoy, but the post was given by 
Charles II. to a brother of one of his mistresses. 

Cowley recast his old comedy of "The Guardian," 
and produced it in December, 1661, as " Cutter of 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

Coleman Street." It was played for a week to a full 
audience, though some condemned it on the supposition 
it was a satire upon the king's party. Cowley cer- 
tainly was too pure and thoughtful to be a fit associate 
for Charles II. and many of his friends. The help 
that came from the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke 
of Buckingham, was in the form of such a lease of the 
Queen's lands as gave the poet a sufficient income. 
Others who had served little were enriched; but he was 
set at ease, and sought no more. He then made his . 
home by the Thames, first at Barn Elms, and after- 
wards at Chertsey, at which latter place he lived for 
about a year in the Porch House, that yet stands. 
Cowley was living at Chertsey when a July evening 
in damp meadows gave him a cold, of which he died 
within a fortnight. That was in the year 1667, year 
also of the death of Jeremy Taylor, and of the birth of 
Jonathan Swift. 

* Abraham Cowley is at his truest in these Essays, 
written during the last seven years of his life. Their 
style is simple, and their thoughts are pure. They 
have, for their keynote, the happiness of one who loves 
true liberty in quiet possession of himself, f When 
he turns to the Latins, his translations are all from 
those lines which would have dwelt most pleasantly 
upon a mind that to the last held by the devout wish 
expressed by himself in a poem of his early youth — (A 
Vote, in " Sylva ") : 

" Books should, not business, entertain the fight, 
And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night. 

My house a cottage more 
Than palace, and should fitting be 
For all my use, no luxury. 

My garden, painted o'er 
"With Nature's hand, not Art's, should pleasures yield, 
Horace might envy in his Sabine field." 

H. M. 



Cowley's Essays. 



OF LIBEETY. 

The liberty of a people consists in being governed 
by laws which they have made themselves, under 

whatsoever form it be of government * the liberty 
of a private man in being master of his own time 
and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of 
God and of his country. Of this latter only we 
are here to discourse, and to inquire what estate of 
life does best suit us in the possession of it. This 
liberty of our own actions is such a fundamental 
privilege of human nature, that God Himself, not- 
withstanding all His infinite power and right over 
us, permits us to enjoy it, and that, too, after a 
forfeiture made by the rebellion of Adam. He 
takes so much care for the entire preservation of it 



14 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

to us, that He suffers neither His providence nor 
eternal decree to break or infringe it. Now for 
our time, the same God, to whom we are but 
tenants-at-will for the whole, requires but the 
seventh part to be paid to Him at as a small quit- 
rent, in acknowledgment of His title. It is man 
only that has the impudence to demand our whole 
time, though he neither gave it, nor can restore it, 
nor is able to pay any considerable value for the 
least part of it. This birthright of mankind above 
all other creatures some are forced by hunger to 
sell, like Esau, for bread and broth ; but the 
greatest part of men make such a bargain for the 
delivery up of themselves, as Thamar did with 
Judah ; instead of a kid, the necessary provisions 
for human life, they are contented to do it for 
rings and bracelets. The great dealers in this 
world may be divided into the ambitious, the 
covetous, and the voluptuous ; and that all these 
men sell themselves to be slaves — though to the 
vulgar it may seem a Stoical paradox — will appear 
to the wise so plain and obvious that they will 



OF LIBERTY. 15 

scarce think it deserves the labour of argumenta- 
tion. Let us first consider the ambitious ; and 
those, both in their progress to greatness, and after 
the attaining of it. There is nothing truer than 
what Sallust says : " Dominationis in alios servitium 
suum mercedem dant " : They are content to pay 
so great a price as their own servitude to purchase 
the domination over others. The first thing they 
must resolve to sacrifice is their whole time ; they 
must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst they 
are in the race of glory ; no, not like Atalanta 
for golden apples ; " Neither indeed can a man 
stop himself if he would, when he is in this 
career. Fertur equis auriga neque audit currus 
habenas. 

Pray let us but consider a little what mean, 
servile things men do for this imaginary food. We 
cannot fetch a greater example of it than from the 
chief men of that nation which boasted most of 
liberty. To what pitiful baseness did the noblest 
Romans submit themselves for the obtaining of a 
prsetorship, or the consular dignity *! They put on 



16 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

the habit of suppliants, and ran about, on foot and 
in dirt, through all the tribes to beg voices ; they 
nattered the poorest artisans, and carried a nomen- 
clator with them, to whisper in their ear every 
man's name, lest they should mistake it in their 
salutations ; they shook the hand, and kissed the 
cheek of every popular tradesman ; they stood all 
day at every market in the public places, to show 
and ingratiate themselves to the rout ; they em- 
ployed all their friends to solicit for them ; they 
kept open tables in every street ; they distributed 
wine, and bread, and money, even to the vilest of 
the people. En Romanes, rerum Dominos ! Behold 
the masters of the world beginning from door to 
door. This particular humble way to greatness 
is now out of fashion, but yet every ambitious 
person is still in some sort a Roman candidate. 
He must feast and bribe, and attend and natter, 
and adore many beasts, though not the beast with 
many heads. Catiline, who was so proud that he 
could not content himself with a less power than 
Sylla's, was yet so humble for the attaining of it, 



OF LIBERTY. 17 

as to make himself the most contemptible of all 
servants, to be a public bawd for all the young 
gentlemen of Rome whose hot lusts, and courages, 
and heads, he thought he might make use of. And 
since I happen here to propose Catiline for my 
instance, though there be thousand of examples for 
the same thing, give me leave to transcribe the cha- 
racter which Cicero gives of this noble slave, because 
it is a general description of all ambitious men, and 
which Machiavel perhaps would say ought to be the 
rule of their life and actions. " This man," says 
he, as most of you may well remember, " had many 
artificial touches and strokes that looked like the 
beauty of great virtues; his intimate conversation 
was with the worst of men, and yet he seemed to 
be an admirer and lover of the best; he was fur- 
nished with all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet 
wanted not the arms of labour and industry : 
neither do I believe that there was ever any 
monster in nature, composed out of so many dif- 
ferent and disagreeing parts. Who more accept- 
able, sometimes, to the most honourable persons? 



18 cowley's essays. 

who more a favourite to the most infamous ? who, 
sometimes, appeared a braver champion ? who, at 
other times, a bolder enemy to his country 1 who 
more dissolute in his pleasures % who more patient 
in his toils 1 who more rapacious in robbing ? who 
more profuse in giving ? Above all things, this 
was remarkable and admirable in him. The arts 
he had to acquire the good opinion and kindness 
of all sorts of men, to retain it with great com- 
plaisance, to communicate all things to them, to 
watch and serve all the occasions of their fortune, 
both with his money and his interest, and his 
industry, and if need were, not by sticking at any 
wickedness whatsoever that might be useful to 
them, to bend and turn about his own nature and 
la veer with every wind, to live severely with the 
melancholy, merrily with the pleasant, gravely 
with the aged, wantonly with the young, des- 
perately with the bold, and debauchedly with the 
luxurious. With this variety and multiplicity of 
his nature, as he had made a collection of friend- 
ships with all the most wicked and reckless of all 



OF LIBERTY. 19 

nations, so, by the artificial simulation of some 
virtues, he made a shift to ensnare some honest and 
eminent persons into hk familiarity ; neither could 
so vast a design as the destruction of this empire 
have been undertaken by him, if: the immanity 
of so many vices had not been covered and dis- 
guised by the appearances of some excellent 
qualities." 

I see, methinks, the character of an Anti-Paul, 
who became all things to all men, that he might 
destroy all ; who only wanted the assistance of 
fortune to have been as great as his friend Csesar 
was, a little after him. And the way ^ of Csesar to 
compass the same ends — I mean till the civil war, 
which was but another manner of setting his 
country on fire — were not unlike thesd, though he 
used afterward his unjust dominion with more 
moderation than I think the other would have 
done. Sallust, therefore, who was well acquainted 
with them both, and with many such-like gentle- 
men of his time, says, "That it is the nature of 
ambition" (Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri 



20 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

coegity etc) " to make men liars and cheaters ; to 
hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like 
jugglers, anothei thing in their mouths ; to out all 
friendships and enmities to the measure of their 
own interest, Jftnd to make a good countenance 
without the help of good will." And can there be 
freedom with this perpetual constraint 1 What is 
it but a kind if rack that forces men to say what 
they have no mind to ? I have wondered at the 
extravagant and barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, 
and more at the praises which I find of so deformed 
an action; who, though he was one of the seven 
grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who 
had freed before his country from an ignoble servi- 
tude, slit his own nose and lips, cut off his own 
ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that 
he might, under pretence of having been mangled 
so inhumanly by Darius, be received into Babylon 
(then besifeged by the Persians) and get into the 
command of it by the recommendation of so cruel 
a sufferance, iand their hopes of his endeavouring 
to revenge it. It is a great pity the Babylonians 



OF LIBERTY. 21 

suspected not his falsehood, that they might have 
cut off his hands too, and whipped him back again. 
But the design succeeded ; he betrayed the city, and 
was made governor of it. What brutish master 
ever punished his offending slave with so little 
mercy as ambition did this Zopirus ? and yet how 
many are there in all nations who imitate him in 
some degree for a less reward ; who, though they 
endure not so much corporal, pain for a small pre- 
ferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick 
not to commit actions, by which they are more 
shamefully and more lastingly stigmatised ? But 
you may say, "Though these be the most ordin- 
ary and open ways to greatness, yet tit ere are 
narrow, thorny, and little-trodden paths, too, 
through which some men find a passage by virtuous 
industry." I grant, sometimes they may ; but then 
that industry must be such as cannot consist with 
liberty, though it may with honesty. 

Thou art careful, frugal, painful. We commend 
a servant so, but not a friend. 

Well, then, we must acknowledge the toil and 



22 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

drudgery which we are forced to endure in this 
assent, but we are epicures and lords when once we 
are gotten up into the high places. This is but a 
short apprenticeship, after which we are made free 
of a royal company. If we fall in love with any 
beauteous woman, we must be content that they 
should be our mistresses whilst we woo them. As 
soon as we are wedded and enjoy, 'tis we shall be 
the masters. 

I am willing to stick to this similitude in the 
case of greatness : we enter into the bonds of it, 
like those of matrimony ; we are bewitched with 
the outward and painted beauty, and take it for 
better or worse before we know its true nature and 
interior inconveniences. u A great fortune," says 
Seneca, "is a great servitude." But many are of 
that opinion which Brutus imputes (1 hope untruly) 
even to that patron of liberty, his friend Cicero. 
"We fear," says he to Atticus, "death, and banish- 
ment, and poverty, a great deal too much. Cicero, 
I am afraid, thinks these to be the worst of evils, 
and if he have but some persons from whom he 



OF LIBERTY. 23 

can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who 
will flatter and worship him, seems to be well 
enough contented with an honourable servitude, 
if anything, indeed, ought to be called honourable 
in so base and contumelious a condition." This 
was spoken as became the bravest man who was 
ever born in the bravest commonwealth. But 
with us, generally, no condition passes for servitude 
that is accompanied with great riches, with honours, 
and with the service of many inferiors. This is 
but a deception of the sight through a false 
medium ; for if a groom serve a gentleman in his 
chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a 
prince, the groom, the gentleman, and the lord are 
as much servants one as the other. The circum- 
stantial difference of the one getting only his 
bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the 
third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to 
this matter than the difference between a plain, a 
rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he who 
sells his whole time and his own will for one 
hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant than he 



24 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

who does it for one hundred pounds ; but I will 
swear they are both merchants, and that he is 
happier than both who can live contentedly without 
selling that estate to which he was born. But 
this dependence upon superiors is but one chain of 
the lovers of power, Amatorem trecentce Pirithoum 
cohibent catence, Let us begin with him by break 
of daj y for by that time he is besieged by two or 
three hundred suitors, and the hall and anti- 
chambers (all the outworks) possessed by the 
enemy ; as soon as his chamber opens" they are 
ready to break into that, or to corrupt the guards 
for entrance. This is so essential a part of great- 
ness, that whosoever is without it looks like a 
fallen favourite, like a person disgraced, and 
condemned to do what he please all the morning. 
There are some who, rather than want this, are 
contented to have their rooms filled up every day 
with murmuring and cursiug creditors, and to 
charge bravely through a body of them to get to 
their coach. Now I would fain know which is the 
worst duty, that of any one particular person who 



OF LIBERTY. 25 

waits to speak with the great man, or the great 
man's, who waits every day to speak with all the 
company. Aliena negotia centum Per caput et 
circum saliunt latus : A hundred businesses of 
other men (many unjust and most impertinent) fly 
continually about his head and ears, and strike 
him in the face like dors. Let us contemplate 
him a little at another special scene of glory, and 
that is his table. Here he seems to be the lord of 
all Nature. The earth affords him her best metals 
for his dishes, her best vegetables and animals for 
his food ; the air and sea supply him with their 
choicest birds and fishes ; and a great many men 
who look like masters attend upon him ; and yet, 
when all this is done, even all this is but Table 
d'Hote. It is crowded with people for whom he 
cares not — with many parasites, and some spies, 
with the most burdensome sort of guests — the 
endeavourers to be witty. 

But everybody pays him great respect, everybody 
commends his meat — that is, his money ; every- 
body admires the exquisite dressing and ordering 



26 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

of it — that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his 
cook ; everybody loves his hospitality — that is, his 
vanity. But I desire to know why the honest 
innkeeper who provides a public table for his 
profits should be but of a mean profession, and he 
who does it for his honour a munificent prince. 
You'll say, because one sells and the other gives. 
Nay, both sell, though for different things — the 
one for plain money, the other for I know not 
what jewels, whose value is in custom and in fancy. 
If, then, his table be made a snare (as the 
Scripture speaks) to his liberty, where can he hope 
for freedom ? there is always and everywhere some 
restraint upon him. He is guarded with crowds, 
and shackled with formalities. The half hat, the 
whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the 
nod, the embrace, the positive parting with a little 
bow, the comparative at the middle of the room, 
the superlative at the door ; and if the person be 
Pan huper sebastos, there's a Huper superlative 
ceremony then of conducting him to the bottom of 
the stairs, or to the very gate : as if there were 



OF LIBERTY. 27 

such rules set to these Leviathans as are to the 
sea, " Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further." 
Perditur hcec inter miser o Lux. Thus wretchedly 
the precious day is lost. 

How many impertinent letters and visits must 
he receive, and sometimes answer both too as im- 
pertinently ] He never sets his foot beyond his 
threshold, unless, like a funeral, he hath a train to 
follow him, as if, like the dead corpse, he could 
not stir till the bearers were all ready. " My 
life," says Horace, speaking to one of these mag- 
niftcos, "is a great deal more easy and commodious 
than thine, in that I can go into the market and 
cheapen what I please without being wondered at; 
and take my horse and ride as far as Tarentum 
without being missed." It is an unpleasant con- 
straint to be always under the sight and observa- 
tion and censure of others \ as there may be 
vanity in it, so, methinks, there should be vexation 
too of spirit. And I wonder how princes can 
endure to have two or three hundred men stand, 
gazing upon them whilst they are at dinner, and 



fc Z8 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 

taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing 
seems greater and more lordly than the multitude 
of domestic servants, but, even this too, if weighed 
seriously, is a piece of servitude ; unless you will 
be a servant to them, as many men are, the trouble 
and care of yours in the government of them all, 
is much more than that of every one of them in 
their observation of you. I take the profession of 
a schoolmaster to be one of the most useful, and 
which ought to be of the most honourable in a 
commonwealth, yet certainly all his farces and 
tyrannical authority over so many boys takes 
away his own liberty more than theirs. 

I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars 
of the slavery of greatness; I shake but a few of 
their outward chains ; their anger, hatred, jealousy, 
fear, envy, grief, and all the et cetera of their pas- 
sions, which are the secret but constant tyrants 
and torturers of their life. I omit here, because 
though they be symptoms most frequent and violent 
in this disease, yet they are common too in some 
degree to the epidemical disease of life itself. But 



OF LIBERTY. 29 

the ambitious man, though he be so many ways a 
slave (0 toties servus /), yet he bears it bravely and 
heroically ; he struts and looks big upon the stage, 
he thinks himself a real prince in his masking 
habit, and deceives too all the foolish part of his 
spectators. He's a slave in Satumalibus. The 
covetous man is a downright servant, a draught 
horse without bells or feathers ; ad metalla dam- 
natu&, a man condemned to work in mines, which 
is the lowest and hardest condition of servitude ; 
and, to increase his misery, a worker there for he 
knows not whom. He heapeth up riches and 
knows not who shall enjoy them ; 'tis only that he 
himself neither shall nor can enjoy them. He is an 
indigent needy slave, he will hardly allow himself 
clothes and board wages ; Unciatim vix demenso de 
suo suum defraudans Genium comparsit miser. 
He defrauds not only other men, but his own 
genius. He cheats himself for money. But the 
servile and miserable condition of this wretch is so 
apparent, that I leave it, as evident to every man's 
sight, as well as judgment. It seems a more 



30 cowley's essays. 

difficult work to prove that the voluptuous man 
too is but a servant. What can be more the life 
of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentle- 
man, than to follow nothing but his own pleasures 1 
Why, I'll tell you who is that true freeman and 
that true gentleman ; not he who blindly follows 
all his pleasures (the very name of follower is 
servile), but he who rationally guides them, and is 
not hindered by outward impediments in the con- 
duct and enjoyment of them. If I want skill or 
force to restrain the beast that I ride upon, though 
I bought it, and call it my own, yet in the truth of 
the matter I am at that time rather his man than 
he my horse. The voluptuous men (whom we are 
fallen upon) may be divided, I think, into the 
lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the 
belly ; the other whom we spoke of before, the 
ambitious and the covetous, were kclku drjpia, evil 
wild beasts ; these are rao-repes apyai, slow bellies, as 
our translation renders it ; but the word " Apyai 
(which is a fantastical word with two directly 
opposite significations) will bear as well the trans- 



OF LIBEE-TY. oi 

lation of quick or diligent bellies, and both interpre- 
tations may be applied to 'these men. Metrodorus 
said, " That he had learnt 'A\r)dcas yaa-rpl x^piC^^h 
to give his belly just thanks for all his pleasures." 
This by the calumniators of Epicurus his philosophy 
was objected as one of the most scandalous of all 
their sayings, which, according to my charitable 
understanding, may admit a very virtuous sense, 
which is, that he thanked his own belly for that 
moderation in the customary appetites of it, which 
can only give a man liberty and happiness in this 
world. Let this suffice at present to be spoken of 
those great triumviri of the world; the covetous 
man, who is a mean villain, like Lepidus; the 
ambitious, w^ho is a brave one, like Octavius ; 
and the voluptuous, who is a loose and debauched 
one, like Mark Antony. Quisnam igitur Liber? 
Sapiens, sihi qui Imperiosus. Not Oenomaus, who 
commits himself wholly to a charioteer that may 
break his neck, but the man 

Who governs his own course with steady hand, 
Who does himself with sovereign power command ; 



32 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

Whom neither death, nor poverty does fright, 
Who stands not awkwardly in his own light 
Against the truth : who can, when pleasures knock 
Loud at his door, keep firm the bolt and lock. 
Who can, though honour at his gate should stay 
In all her masking clothes, send her away, 
And cry, Begone, I have no mind to play. 

This I confess is a freeman ; but it may be said 
that many persons are so shackled by their fortune 
that they are hindered from enjoyment of that 
manumission which they have obtained from virtue. 
I do both understand, and in part feel the weight 
of this objection. All I can answer to it is, " That 
we must get as much liberty as we can ; we must 
use our utmost endeavours, and when all that is 
done, be contented with the length of that line 
which is allowed us." If you ask me in what 
condition of life I think the most allowed, I should 
pitch upon that sort of people whom King James 
was wont to call the happiest of our nation, the 
men placed in the country by their fortune above 
an high constable, and yet beneath the trouble of a 
justice of the peace, in a moderate plenty, without 



OF LIBERTY. 33 

any just argument for the desire of increasing it 
by the care of many relations, and with so much 
knowledge and love of piety and philosophy (that 
is, of the study of God's laws and of his creatures) 
as may afford him matter enough never to be idle 
though without business, and never to be melan- 
choly though without sin or vanity. 

I shall conclude this tedious discourse with a 
prayer of mine in a copy of Latin verses, of which 
I remember no other part, and (pour /aire bonne 
boiiche) with some other verses upon the same 
subject. 

Magne Deus, quod ad has vitce brevis attinet boras, 
Da mihi, da Panem Libertatemque, nee ultra 
Sollicitas effundo preces, si quid datur ultra 
Accipiam gratus ; si non, contentus abibo. 

For the few hours of life allotted me, 

Give me, great G-od, but Bread and Liberty, 

I'll beg no more ; if more thou'rt pleased to give, 

I'll thankfully that overplus receive. 

If beyond this no more be freely sent , 

I'll thank for this, and go away content. 



b— 28 



34 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 



Martial. Lib. 2. 
Vota tui breviter, etc. 

Well then, sir, you shall know how far extend, 
The prayers and hopes of your poetic friend. 
He does not palaces nor manors crave, 
Would be no lord, but less a lord would have. 
The ground he holds, if he his own can call, 
He quarrels not with Heaven because 'tis small : 
Let gay and toilsome greatness others please, 
He loves of homely littleness the ease. 
Can any man in gilded rooms attend, 
And his dear hours in humble visits spend, 
When in the fresh and beauteous fields he may 
With various healthful pleasures fill the day ? 
If there be man, ye gods, I ought to hate, 
Dependence and attendance be his fate. 
Still let him busy be, and in a crowd, 
And very much a slave, and very proud : 
Thus he, perhaps, powerful and rich may grow ; 
No matter, O ye gods ! that I'll allow. 



OF LIBERTY. 35 

But let him peace and freedom never see ; 
Let him not love this life, who loves not me. 



Martial. Lib. 2. 
Vis fieri Liber, etc. 

Would you be free 1 'Tis your chief wish, you 

say, 
Come on ; 111 show thee, friend, the certain way. 
If to no feasts abroad thou lov'st to go, 
Whilst bounteous God does bread at home bestow ; 
If thou the goodness of thy clothes dost prize 
By thine own use, and not by others' eyes ; 
If, only safe from weathers, thou canst dwell 
In a small house, but a convenient shell ; 
If thou without a sigh, or golden wish, 
Canst look upon thy beechen bowl and dish ; 
If in thy mind such power and greatness be — . 
The Persian King 's a slave compared with thee. 



36 cowley's essays. 

Martial. L. 2. 

Quod te nomine ? etc. 

That I do you with humble bows no more, 
And danger of my naked head, adore ; 
That I, who lord and master cried ere while, 
Salute you in a new and different style, 
By your own name, a scandal to you now ; 
Think not that I forget myself or you : 
By loss of all things by all others sought 
This freedom, and the freeman's hat, is bought. 
A lord and master no man wants but he 
Who o'er himself has no authority. 
Who does for honours and for riches strive, 
And follies without which lords cannot live. 
If thou from fortune dost no servant crave, 
Believe it, thou no master need'st to have. 



op liberty. 37 

Ode 
UPON LIBERTY. 



I. 

Freedom with virtue takes her seat ; 
Her proper place, her only scene, 

Is in the golden mean, 
She lives not with the poor, nor with the great : 
The wings of those, Necessity has clipped, 

And they're in Fortune's Bridewell whipped, 

To the laborious task of bread ; 
These are by various tyrants captive led. 
Now wild Ambition with imperious force 
Hides, reins, and spurs them like th' unruly horse ; 

And servile Avarice yokes them now 

Like toilsome oxen to the plough ; 
And sometimes Lust, like the misguiding light, 
Draws them through all the labyrinths of night. 
If any few among the great there be 

From the insulting passions free, 



38 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 

Yet we even those too fettered see 

By custom, business, crowds, and formal decency ; 

And wheresoe'er they stay, and wheresoe'er they go, 
Impertinences round them now. 
These are the small uneasy things 
Which about greatness still are found, 
And rather it molest than wound 

Like gnats which too much heat of summer brings ; 

But cares do swarm there too, and those have 
stings : 

As when the honey does too open lie, 
A thousand wasps about it fly 

Nor will the master even to share admit ; 

The master stands aloof, and dares not taste of it. 

ii. 
'Tis morning, well, I fain would yet sleep on ; 

You cannot now ; you must be gone 

To Court, or to the noisy hall : 
Besides, the rooms without are crowded all ; 

The steam of business does begin, 
And a springtide of clients is come in. 



OF LIBERTY, 39 

Ah, cruel guards, which this poor prisoner keep, 

Will they not suffer him to sleep ! 
Make an escape ; out at the postern flee, 
And get some blessed hours of liberty. 
With a few friends, and a few dishes dine, 

And much of mirth and moderate wine ; 
To thy bent mind some relaxation give, 
And steal one day out of thy life to live. 
Oh happy man, he cries, to whom kind Heaven 

Has such a freedom always given ! 
Why, mighty madman, what should hinder thee 

From being every day as free % 

in. 

In all the freeborn nations of the air, 

Never did bird a spirit so mean and sordid bear 

As to exchange his native liberty 

Of soaring boldly up into the sky, 

His liberty to sing, to perch, or fly 

When, and wherever he thought good. 

And all his innocent pleasures of the wood, 

For a more plentiful or constant food. 



40 cowley's essays. 

Nor ever did ambitious rage 

Make him into a painted cage 
Or the false forest of a well-hung room 

For honour and preferment come. 
Now, blessings on ye all, ye heroic race, 
Who keep their primitive powers and rights so 
well 

Though men and angels fell. 
Of all material lives the highest place 

To you is justly given, 

And ways and walks the nearest Heaven ; 
Whilst wretched we, yet vain and proud, think 
fit 

To boast that we look up to it. 
Even to the universal tyrant Love 

You homage pay but once a year ; 
None so degenerous and unbirdly prove. 

As his perpetual yoke to bear. 
None but a few unhappy household fowl, 

Whom human lordship does control ; 

Who from their birth corrupted were 
By bondage, and by man's example here. 



OF LIBERTY. 41 

IV. 

He's no small prince who every day 
Thus to himself can say, 

Now will I sleep, now eat, now sit, now walk, 

Now meditate alone, now with acquaintance 
talk ; 

This I will cfo, here I will stay, 

Or, if my fancy call me away, 

My man and I will presently go ride 

(For we before have nothing to provide, 

Nor after are to render an account) 

To Dover, Berwick, or the Cornish Mount. 
If thou but a short journey take, 
As if thy last thou wert to make, 

Business must be despatched ere thou canst 
part. 
Nor canst thou stir unless there be 
A hundred horse and men to wait on thee, 
And many a mule, and many a cart : 
What an unwieldy man thou art ! 
The Bhodian Colossus so 
A journey too might go. 



42 cowley's essays. 

v. 

Where honour or where conscience does not 
bind, 

No other law shall shackle me ? 

Slave to myself I will not be, 
Nor shall my future actions be confined 

By my own present mind. 
Who by resolves and vows engaged does stand 

For days that yet belong to fate, 
Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate 

Before it falls into his hand ; 

The bondman of the cloister so 
All that he does receive does always owe. 
And still as time come in it goes away, 

Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. 
Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell 
Which his v hour's work, as well as hour's does tell ! 
Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell. 

VI. 

If Life should a well-ordered poem be 
(In which he only hits the white 



OP LIBERTY. 43 

Who joins true profit with the best delight), 
The more heroic strain let others take, 

Mine the Pindaric way I'll make, 
The matter shall be grave, the numbers loose and 

free. 
It shall not keep one settled pace of time, 
In the same tune it shall not always chime, 
Nor shall each day just to his neighbour rhyme. 
A thousand liberties it shall dispense, 
And yet shall manage all without offence 
Or to the sweetness of the sound, or greatness of 

the sense; 
Nor shall it never from one subject start, 

Nor seek transitions to depart, 
Nor its set way o'er stiles and bridges make, 

Nor thorough lanes a compass take 
As if it feared some trespass to commit, 

When the wide air 's a road for it. 
So the imperial eagle does not stay 

Till the whole carcase he devour 

That's fallen into its power ; 
As if his generous hunger understood 



44 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

That he can never want plenty of food, 

He only sucks the tasteful blood, 
And to fresh game flies cheerfully away ; 
To kites and meaner birds he leaves the mangled 
prey. 



45 



OF SOLITUDE. 

" Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus" is now 
become a very vulgar saying. Every man and 
almost every boy for these seventeen hundred years 
has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken 
by the excellent Scipio, who was without question 
a most worthy, most happy, and the greatest of all 
mankind. His meaning no doubt was this : that 
he found more satisfaction to his mind, and more 
improvement of it by solitude than by company ; 
and to show that he spoke not this loosely or out 
of vanity, after he had made Rome mistress of 
almost the whole world, he retired himself from it 
by a voluntary exile, and at a private house in the 
middle of a wood near Linternum passed the re- 
mainder of his glorious life no less gloriously. 
This house Seneca went to see so long after with 
great veneration, and, among other things, describes 



46 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

his bath to have been of so mean a structure, that 
now, says he, the basest of the people would de- 
spise them, and cry out, " Poor Scipio understood 
not how to live." What an authority is here for 
the credit of retreat ! and happy had it been for 
Hannibal if adversity could have taught him as 
much wisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the 
highest prosperities. This would be no wonder if 
it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily said 
by Monsieur de Montaigne, that ambition itself 
might teach us to love solitude : there is nothing 
does so much hate to have companions. It is true, 
it loves to have its elbows free, it detests to have 
company on either side, but it delights above all 
things in a train' behind, aye, and ushers, too, be- 
fore it. But the greater part of men are so far from 
the opinion of that noble Roman, that if they 
chance at any time to be without company they 
are like a becalmed ship ; they never move but 
by the wind of other men's breath, and have 
no oars of their own to steer withal. It is very 
fantastical and contradictory in human nature, 



OF SOLITUDE. 47 

that men should love themselves above all the rest 
of the world, and yet never endure to be with 
themselves. When they are in love with a- mis- 
tress, all other persons are importunate and burden- 
some to them. " Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam 
lubens" They would live and die with her alone. 

Sic ego secretis possum bene vivere silvis 
Qua nulla liumano sit via trita jpede, 

Tu mihi cur arum 7'equies, tu nocte vel atrd 
Lumen, et in solis tu mild turba locis. 

With thee for ever I in woods could rest, 
Where never human foot the ground has pressed ; 
Thou from all shades the darkness canst exclude, 
And from a desert banish solitude. 

And yet our dear self is so wearisome to us that 
we can scarcely support its conversation for an 
hour together. This is such an odd temper of 
mind as Catullus expresses towards one of his 
mistresses, whom we may suppose to have been of 
a very unsociable humour. 



48 cowxey's essays. 

Odi et Amo, qua nam idfaciam rations requiris? 
Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et exerucior. 

I hate, and yet I love thee foo ; 
How can that be ? I know not how ; 
Only that so it is I know, 
And feel with torment that 'tis so. 

It is a deplorable condition this, and drives a 
man sometimes to pitiful shifts in seeking how to 
avoid himself. 

The truth of the matter is, that neither he who 
is a fop in the world is a fit man to be alone, nor 
he who has set his heart much upon the world, 
though he has ever so much understanding; so 
that solitude can be well fitted and set right but 
upon a very few persons. They must have enough 
knowledge of the world to see the vanity of it, and 
enough virtue to despise all vanity ; if the mind 
be possessed with any lust or passions, a man had 
better be in a fair than in a wood alone. They 
may, like petty thieves, cheat us perhaps, and pick 
our pockets in the midst of company, but like 



OF SOLITUDE. 49 

robbers, they use to strip and bind, or murder us 
when they catch us alone. This is but to retreat 
from men, and fall into the hands of devils. It 
is like the punishment of parricides among the 
Romans, to be sewed into a bag with an ape, a 
dog, and a serpent. Wne first work, therefore, that 
a man must do to make himself capable of the 
good of solitude is the very eradication of all lusts, 
for how is it possible for a man to enjoy himself 
while his affections are tied to things without him- 
self ? In the second place, he must learn the art 
and get the habit of thinking ; for this too, no less 
than well speaking, depends upon much practice ; 
and cogitation is the thing which distinguishes the 
solitude of a god from a wild beast. Now because 
the soul of man is not by its own nature or obser- 
vation furnished with sufficient materials to work 
upon; it is necessary for it to have continual 
resource to learning and books for fresh sup-~ 
plies, so that the solitary life will grow indigent, 
and be ready to starve without them ; but if 
once we be thoroughly engaged in the love of 



50 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

letters, instead of being wearied with the length 
of any day, we shall only complain of the short- 
ness of our whole life. 

O vita, stulto long a, sapienti orevis ! 
life, long to the fool, short to the wise ! 

The First Minister of State has not so much 
business in public as a wise man has in private ; if 
the one have little leisure to be alone, the other 
has less leisure to be in company ; the one has but 
part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the 
works of God and nature under his consideration. 
There is no saying shocks me so much as that 
which I hear very often, " That a man does not 
know how to pass his time." It would have been 
but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred 
and sixty-ninth year of his life, so far it is from us, 
who have not time enough to attain to the utmost 
perfection of any part of any science, to have cause 
to complain that we are forced to be idle for want 
of work. But this you will say is work only for 
the learned, others are not capable either of the 



OF SOLITUDE. 51 

employments or the divertisements that arise from 
letters. I know they are not, and therefore can- 
not much recommend solitude to a man totally 
illiterate. But if any man be so unlearned as to 
want entertainment of the little intervals of acci- 
dental solitude, which frequently occur in almost 
all conditions (except the very meanest of the 
people, who have business enough in the necessary 
provisions for life), it is truly a great shame both 
to his parents and himself ; for a very small portion 
of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of 
our time, either music, or painting, or designing, 
or chemistry, or history, or gardening, or twenty 
other things, will do it usefully and pleasantly ; 
and if he happen to set his affections upon poetry 
(which I do not advise him too immoderately) that 
will overdo it ; no wood will be thick enough to 
hide him from the importunities of company or 
business, which would abstract him from his 
beloved. 



O quis me gelidis sub montibus Hcemi 

Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrd ? 



62 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

r. 

Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good ! 

Hail, ye plebeian underwood ! 

Where the poetic birds rejoice, 
And for their quiet nests and plenteous food 

Pay with their grateful voice. 

II. 
Hail, the poor Muses' richest manor seat ! 

Ye country houses and retreat 

Which all the happy gods so love, 
That for you oft they quit their bright and great 

Metropolis above. 

in. 
Here Nature does a house for me erect, 

Nature the wisest architect, 

Who those fond artists does despise 
That can the fair and living trees neglect, 

Yet the dead timber prize. 

IV. 

Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, 
Hear the soft winds, above me flying, 



OF SOLITUDE. 53 

With all their wanton boughs dispute, 
And the more tuneful birds to both replying, 
Nor be myself too mute. 

v. 

A silver stream shall roll his waters near, 
Gilt with the sunbeams here and there, 
On whose enamelled bank 111 walk, 

And see how prettily they smile, and hear 
How prettily they talk. 

VI. 

Ah wretched, and too solitary he 

Who loves not his own company ! 

Hell feel the weight oft many a day, 
Unless he call in sin or vanity 

To help to bear't away. 

VII. 

Oh solitude, first state of human-kind ! 

Which blest remained till man did find 

Even his own helper's company. 
As soon as two, alas, together joined, 

The serpent made up three. 



54 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

VIII. 

Though God himself, through countless ages, thee 
His sole companion chose to be, . 
Thee, sacred Solitude alone ; 

Before the branchy head of numbers Three 
Sprang from the trunk of One. 

IX. 

Thou (though men think thine an unactive part) 
Dost break and tame th' unruly heart, 
Which else would know no settled pace, 

Making it move, well managed by thy art, 
With swiftness and with grace. 

x. 

Thou the faint beams of Reason's scattered light 

Dost like a burning glass unite ; 

Dost multiply the feeble heat, 
And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright 

And noble fires beget. 

XI. 

Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks, I see 
The monster London laugh at me ; 



OF SOLITUDE. 

I should at thee too, foolish city, 
If it were fit to laugh at misery. 
But thy estate, I pity. 

XII. 

Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, 
And the fools that crowd thee so, — 
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast, 

A village less than Islington wilt grow, 
A solitude almost. 



56 



OF OBSCUKITY. 



Nam neque divitibus contingunt g audio, soils, 
Nee viccit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit. 

G-od made not pleasures only for the rich, 

Nor have those men without their share too lived, 

Who both in life and death the world deceived. 

This seems a strange sentence thus literally trans- 
lated, and looks as if it were in vindication of the 
men of business (for who else can deceive the 
world?) whereas it is in commendation of those 
who live and die so obscurely, that the world takes 
no notice of them. This Horace calls deceiving 
the world, and in another place uses the same 
phrase. 

Seeretum iter etfallentis semita vitre. 

The secret tracks of the deceiving life. 

It is very elegant in Latin, but our English 



OF OBSCURITY. 57 

word will hardly bear up to that sense, and there- 
fore Mr. Broome translates it very well : 

Or from a life, led as it were by stealth. 

Yet we say in our language, a thing deceives our 
sight, when it passes before us unperceived, and 
we may say well enough out of the same author : 

Sometimes with sleep, sometimes with wine we strive 
The cares of life and troubles to deceive. 

But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive 
ourselves, as Quintilian says, Vitam fallere, To 
draw on still, and amuse, and deceive our life, 
till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal period, 
and fall into that pit which Nature hath prepared 
for it. The meaning of all this is no more than 
that most vulgar saying, Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, 
He has lived well, who has lain well hidden. 
Which, if it be a truth, the world, I'll swear, is 
sufficiently deceived. For my part, I think it is, 
and that the pleasantest condition of life, is in 
incognito. What a brave privilege is it to be free 



58 cowley's essays. 

from all contentions, from all envying or being 
envied, from receiving and from paying all kind of 
ceremonies 1 It is in my mind a very delightful 
pastime, for two good and agreeable friends to 
travel up and down together in places where they 
are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It 
was the case of ^Eneas and his Achates, when 
they walked invisibly about the fields and streets 
of Carthage, Yenus herself 

A veil of thickened air around them cast, 

That none might know, or see them as they passed. 

The common story of Demosthenes's confession 
that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a 
Tanker-woman say as he passed, "This is that 
Demosthenes," is wonderful ridiculous from so 
solid an orator. I myself have often met with 
that temptation to vanity (if it were any), but am 
so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only 
makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it 
were, out of sight shot. Democritus relates, and 
in such a manner, as if he gloried in the good 



OF OBSCURITY 59 

fortune and commodity of it, that when he came 
to Athens, nobody there did so much as take 
notice of him ; and Epicurus lived there very well, 
that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so 
famous since that time, with his friend Metro- 
dorus : after whose death, making in one of his 
letters a kind commemoration of the happiness 
which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at 
last, that he thought it no disparagement to those 
great felicities of their life, that in the midst of 
the most talked of and talking country in 
the world, they had lived so long, not only with- 
out fame, but almost without being heard of. 
And yet within a very few years afterward, there 
were no two names of men more known or more 
generally celebrated. If we engage into a large 
acquaintance and various familiarities, we set 
open our gates to the invaders of most of our 
time : we expose our life to a Quotidian Ague of 
frigid impertinences, which would make a wise 
man tremble to think of. Now, as for being 
known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot 



60 cowley's essays. 

comprehend the honour that lies in that. What- 
soever it be, every mountebank has it more than 
the best doctor, and the hangman more than the 
Lord Chief Justice of a city. Every creature has 
it both of nature and art if it be any ways extra- 
ordinary. It was as often said, "This is that 
Bucephalus/' or, " This is that Incitatus," when 
they were led prancing through the streets, as 
"This is that Alexander," or, "This is thab 
Domitian " ; and truly for the latter, I take 
Incitatus to have been a much more honourable 
beast than his master, and more deserving the 
consulship than he the empire. I love and 
commend a true good fame, because it is the 
shadow of virtue ; not that it doth any good to the 
body which it accompanies, but 'tis an efficacious 
shadow, and like that of St. Peter cures the 
diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no 
doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such 
as was the glory of Cato and Aristides, but it was 
harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to 
any man wMlst he lives ; what it is to him after 



OF OBSCURITY. 61 

his death, I cannot say, because I love not 
philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and 
no man who has made the experiment has been 
so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon 
the whole matter, I account a person who has a 
moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the con- 
versation of two or three agreeable friends, with 
little commerce in the world besides ; who is 
esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that 
know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody ; 
and so after a healthful quiet life, before the great 
inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out 
of it than he came in (for I would not have him 
so much as cry in the exit) ; this innocent 
deceiver of the word, as Horace calls him, this 
Muta Persona, I take to have been more happy in 
his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage 
with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus 
himself, who asked with his last breath, whether 
lie had not played his farce very well. 



62 cowley's essays. 

Seneca, ex Thyeste, 

Act 2. OJwr. 
Stet quicunque volet, potens, 
Aulce culmine lubrico, etc. 

Upon the slippery tops of human state, 

The gilded pinnacles of fate, 
Let others proudly stand, and for a while, 

The giddy danger to beguile, 
With joy and with disdain look down on all, 

Till their heads turn, and down they fall. 
Me, O ye gods, on earth, or else so near 

That I no fall to earth may fear, 
And, O ye gods, at a good distance seat 

From the long ruins of the great ! 
Here wrapped in the arms of quiet let me lie, 
Quiet, companion of obscurity. 
Here let my life, with as much silence slide, 

As time that measures it does glide. 
Nor let the breath of infamy or fame, 
From town to town echo about my name ; 
Nor let my homely death embroidered be 

With scutcheon or with elegy. 



OF OBSCURITY. 63 

An old plebeian let me die, 
Alas, all then are such, as well as I. 

To him, alas, to him, I fear, 
The face of death will terrible appear ; 
Who in his life, flattering his senseless pride 
By being known to all the world beside, 
Does not himself, when he is dying, know ; 
Nor what he is, nor whither he's to go. 



64 



OP AGEICULTUEE. 



The first wish of Yirgil (as you will find anon by 
his verses), was to be a good philosopher; the 
second, a good husbandman; and God (whom he 
seemed to understand better than most of the most 
learned heathens) dealt with him just as he did 
with Solomon : because he prayed for wisdom in 
the first place, he added all things else which were 
subordinately to be desired. He made him one of 
the best philosophers, and best husbandmen, and 
to adorn and communicate both those faculties, the 
best poet. He made him, besides all this, a rich 
man, and a man who desired to be no richer, 
fortunatus nimium et bona qui sua novit. To 
be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city ; 
to be a philosopher, from the world ; or rather, a 
retreat from the world, as it is Man's — into the 
world, as it is God's. But since Nature denies to 



OF AGRICULTURE. 65 

most men the capacity or appetite, and Fortune 
alldws but to a very few the opportunities or 
possibility, of applying themselves wholly to philo- 
sophy, the best mixture of human affairs that we 
can make are the employments of a country life. 
It is, as Columella calls it, Res sine dubitatione 
proximo, et quasi consanguinea sapiential, the 
nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred to 
Philosophy. Yarro says the principles of it are 
the same which Ennius made to be the principles 
of all nature ; earth, water, air, and the sun. It 
does certainly comprehend more parts of philo- 
sophy than any one profession, art, or science in 
the world besides : and, therefore, Cicero says, the 
pleasures of a husbandman, Mihi ad sapientis vitam 
proxime videntur accedere, come very nigh to those 
of a philosopher. There is no other sort of life 
that affords so many branches of praise to a 
panegyrist : The utility of it to a man's ^elf ; the 
usefulness, or, rather, necessity of it to all the rest 
of mankind ; the innocence, the pleasure, the an- 
tiquity, the dignity. The utility (I mean plainly 
c— 28 



66 cowley's essays. 

the lucre of it) is not so great now in our nation as 
arises from merchandise and the trading of the 
city, from whence many of the best estates and 
chief honours of the kingdom are derived ; we 
have no men now fetched from the plough to be 
made lords, as they were in Home to be made 
consuls and dictators, the reason of which I con- 
ceive to be from an evil custom now grown as 
strong among us as if it were a law, which is, that 
no men put their children to be bred up appren- 
tices in agriculture, as in other trades, but such 
who are so poor, that when they come to be men 
they have not wherewithal to set up in it, and so 
can only farm some small parcel of ground, the 
rent of which devours all but the bare subsistence 
of the tenant ; whilst they who are proprietors of 
the land are either too proud or, for want of that 
kind of education, too ignorant to improve their 
estates, though the means of doing it be as easy 
and certain in this as in any other track of com- 
merce. If there were always two or three thou- 
sand youths, for seven or eight years bound to this 



OF AGRICULTURE. 67 

profession, that they might learn the whole art of it, 
and afterwards be enabled to be masters in it, by a 
moderate stock, I cannot doubt but that we should 
see as many aldermen's estates made in the coun- 
try as now we do out of all kind of merchandising 
in the city. There are as many ways to be rich ; and, 
which is better, there is no possibility to be poor, 
without such negligence as can neither have excuse 
nor pity ; for a little ground will, without question, 
feed a little family, and the superfluities of life 
(which are now in some cases by custom made 
almost necessary) must be supplied out of the 
superabundance of art and industry, or contemned 
by as great a degree of philosophy. As for the 
necessity of this art, it is evident enough, since 
this can live without all others, and no one other 
without this. This is like speech, without which 
the society of men cannot be preserved ; the others 
like figures and tropes of speech which serve only 
to adorn it. Many nations have lived, and some 
do still, without any art but this ; not so elegantly, 
I confess, but still they live ; and almost all the 



68 cowley's essays. 

other arts which are here practised are beholding 
to them for most of their materials. The inno- 
cence of this life is in the next thing for which I 
commend it, and if husbandmen preserve not that, 
they are much to blame, for no men are so free 
from the temptations of iniquity. They live by 
what they can get by industry from the earth, and 
others by what they can catch by craft from men. 
They live upon an estate given them by their 
mother, and others upon an estate cheated from 
their brethren. They live like sheep and kine, by 
the allowances of Nature, and others like wolves and 
foxes by the acquisitions of rapine ; and, I hope, I 
may affirm (without any offence to the great) that 
sheep and kine are very useful, and that wolves 
and foxes are pernicious creatures. They are, 
without dispute, of all men the most quiet and 
least apt to be inflamed to the disturbance of the 
commonwealth ; their manner of life inclines 
them, and interest binds them, to love peace. In 
our late mad and miserable civil wars, all other 
trades, even to the meanest, set forth whole troops, 



OF AGRICULTURE. 69 

and raised up some great commanders, who became 
famous and mighty for the mischiefs they had 
done. But I do not remember the name of any 
one husbandman who had so considerable a share 
in the twenty years' ruin of his country, as to de- 
serve the curses of his countrymen ; and if great 
delights be joined with so much innocence, I think 
it is ill done of men not to take them here where 
they are so tame and ready at hand, rather than 
hunt for them in courts and cities, where they 
are so wild and the chase so troublesome and 
dangerous. 

We are here among the vast and noble scenes of 
Nature ; we are there among the pitiful shifts of 
policy. We walk here in the light and open ways 
of the divine bounty ; we grope there in the dark 
and confused labyrinths of human malice. Our 
senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine 
taste of their objects, which are all sophisticated 
there, and for the most part overwhelmed with 
their contraries. Here Pleasure looks, methinks, 
like a beautiful, constant, and modest wife ; it is 



70 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

there an impudent, fickle, and painted harlot. 
Here is harmless and cheap plenty, there guilty 
and expenseful luxury. 

I shall only instance in one delight more, the 
most natural and best natured of all others, a per- 
petual companion of the husbandman : and that is r 
the satisfaction of looking round about him, and 
seeing nothing but the effects and improvements 
of his own art and diligence ; to be always gather- 
ing of some fruits of it, and at the same time to 
behold others ripening, and others budding ; to 
see all his fields and gardens covered with the 
beauteous creatures of his own industry ; and to 
see, like God, that all his works are good. 

Hinc at que hinc glomerantur Oreades ; ipsi 
Agricolce taciturn pertentant gaudia pectus. 

On his heart-strings a secret joy does strike. 

The antiquity of his art is certainly not to be 
contested by any other. The three first men in the 
world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier ; 
and if any man object that the second of these was 



OF AGRICULTURE. 71 

a murderer, I desire he would consider, that as soon 
as he was so, he quitted our profession and turned 
builder. It is for this reason, I suppose, that Eccle- 
siasticus forbids us to hate husbandry ; because, 
says he, the Most High has created it. We were 
all born to this art, and taught by nature to 
nourish our bodies by the same earth out of which 
they were made, and to which they must return 
and pay at last for their sustenance. 

Behold the original and primitive nobility of all 
those great persons who are too proud now not 
only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon 
it. We may talk what we please of lilies and lions 
rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or or 
d'argent ; but if heraldry were guided by reason, 
a plough in a field arable would be the most nobla 
and ancient arms. 

All these considerations make me fall into tho 
wonder and complaint of Columella, how it should 
come to pass that all arts or sciences (for the dis- 
pute, which is an art and which is a science, does, 
not belong to the curiosity of us husbandmen)^ 



72 cowley's essays. 

metaphysic, physic, morality, mathematics, logic, 
rhetoric, etc., which are all, I grant, good and useful 
faculties, except only metaphysic, which I do not 
know whether it be anything or no, but even 
vaulting, fencing, dancing, attiring, cookery, carv- 
ing, and such like vanities, should all have public 
schools and masters ; and yet that we should never 
see or hear of any man who took upon him the 
profession of teaching this so pleasant, so vir- 
tuous, so profitable, so honourable, so necessary 
art. 

A man would think, when he's in serious humour, 
that it .were but a vain, irrational, and ridicu- 
lous thing for a great company of men and women 
to run up and down in a room together, in a hun- 
dred several postures and figures, to no purpose, 
and with no design ; and therefore dancing was 
invented first, and only practised anciently, in the 
ceremonies of the heathen religion, which consisted 
all in mummery and madness ; the latter being the 
chief glory of the worship, and accounted divine 
inspiration. This, I say, a severe man would think. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 73 

though I dare not determine so far against so cus- 
tomary a part now of good breeding. And yet, 
who is there among our gentry that does not enter- 
tain a dancing master for his children as soon as 
they are able to walk ] But did ever any father 
provide a tutor for his son to instruct him betimes 
in the nature and improvements of that land which 
he intended to leave him 1 That is at least a super- 
fluity, and this a defect in our manner of educa- 
tion; and therefore T could wish, but cannot in 
these times much hope to see it, that one college in 
each university were erected, and appropriated to 
this study, as well as there are to medicine and the 
civil law. There would be no need of making a 
body of scholars and fellows, with certain endow- 
ments, as in other colleges ; it would suffice if, after 
the manner of Halls in Oxford, there were only four 
professors constituted (for it would be too much 
work for only one master, or Principal, as they call 
him there) to teach these four parts of it. First, 
aration, and all things relating to it. Secondly, 
pasturage; thirdly, gardens, orchai'ds, vineyards, 



74 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

and woods ; fourthly, all parts of rural economy, 
which would contain the government of bees, swine, 
poultry, decoys, ponds, etc., and all that which Varro 
calls Yillaticas Pastiones, together with the sports 
of the field, which ought not to be looked upon 
only as pleasures, but as parts of housekeeping, and 
the domestical conservation and uses of all that is 
brought in by industry abroad. The business of 
these professors should not be, as is commonly 
practised in other arts, only to read pompous and 
superficial lectures out of Virgil's Georgics, Pliny, 
Varro, or Columella, but to instruct their pupils in 
the whole method and course of this study, which 
might be run through perhaps with diligence in a 
year or two ; and the continual succession of scholars 
upon a moderate taxation for their diet, lodging, 
and learning, would be a sufficient constant revenue 
for maintenance of the house and the professors, 
who should be men not chosen for the ostentation 
of critical literature, but for solid and experimental 
knowledge of the things they teach such men ; so 
industrious and public spirited as I conceive Mr. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 75 

Hartlib to be, if the gentleman be yet alive. But 
it is needless to speak further of my thoughts of 
this design, unless the present disposition of the 
age allowed more probability of bringing it into 
execution. What I have further to say of the 
country life shall be borrowed from the poets, who 
were always the most faithful and affectionate 
friends to it. Poetry was born among the shep- 
herds. 

Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine musas 
Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse suu 

The Muses still love their own native place, 
'T has secret charms which nothing can deface. 

The truth is, no other place is proper for their 
work. One might as well undertake to dance in a 
crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of noise 
and tumult. 

As well might corn as verse in cities grow ; 
In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow, 
Against th' unnatural soil in vain we strive, 
'Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive. 



76 cowley's essays. 

It will bear nothing but the nettles or thorns of 
satire, which grow most naturally in the worst 
earth ; and therefore almost all poets, except those 
who were not able to eat bread without the bounty 
of great men, that is, without what they could get 
by nattering of them, have not only withdrawn 
themselves from the vices and vanities of the grand 
world (pariter vitiisque jocisque altius humanis 
exeruere caput) into the innocent happiness of a 
retired life ; but have commended and adorned 
nothing so much by their ever-living poems. Hesiod 
was the first or second poet in the world that 
remains yet extant (if Homer, as some think, pre- 
ceded him, but I rather believe they were contem- 
poraries), and he is the first writer, too, of the art 
of husbandry. He has contributed, says Columella, 
not a little to our profession ; I suppose he means 
not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions 
is not very important. His great antiquity is visible 
through the gravity and simplicity of his style. 
The most acute of all his sayings concerns our 
purpose very much, and is couched in the reverend 



OF AGItlCUI/rURE. 77 

obscurity of an oracle. n\*ov fato-v -rravros. The half is 
more than the whole. The ocdasion of the speech 
is this : his brother Perses had by corrupting some 
great men (Bao-i\rjas Aopo^dyovs^ great bribe eaters 
he calls them) gotten from him the half of his estate. 
It is no matter, says he, they have not done me 
so much prejudice as they imagine. 

N^7rioi, ou5' 'icracnv oace tvXsov fyfuo'v travibs, 
Ou5' '6crov iu jxaKaxV re Kal atr^o&eAy/icy' uveias, 
Kpv\pauT€s yap exovori 6eo\ fiiov avOpdoiroKTi. 

Unhappy they to whom G-od has not revealed 
By a strong light which must their sense control, 
That half a great estate's more than the whole. 
Unhappy, from whom still concealed does lie 
Of roots and herbs the wholesome luxury. 

This I conceive to have been honest Hesiod's 
meaning. From Homer we must not expect much 
concerning our affairs. He was blind, and could 
neither work in the country nor enjoy the pleasures 
of it ; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sus- 
tained in the richest places, he was to delight the 
Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures 



78 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

of their ancestors ; his subject removed him from 
all commerce with us, and yet, methinks, he made 
a shift to show his goodwill a little. For though 
he could do us no honour in the person of his hero 
Ulysses (much less of Achilles), because his whole 
time was consumed in wars and voyages, yet he 
makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, 
and seeking his consolation for the absence of his 
son in the pleasure of planting and even dunging 
his own grounds. Yet, see, he did not contemn us 
peasants ; nay, so far was he from that insolence, 
that he always styles Eumseus, who kept the hogs 
with wonderful respect, Atov ticpopPov. the divine 
swine-herd ; he could have done no more for Mene- 
laus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very an- 
cient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he 
wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet 
to a husbandman e^i/Scto aTos aypdrris. The divine 
husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but A?os 
himself. These were civil Greeks, and who under- 
stood the dignity of our calling. Among the 
Eomans, we have in the first place our truly divine 



OF AGRICULTURE. 79 

Virgil, who, though by the favour of Maecenas and 
Augustus he might have been one of the chief men 
of Rome, yet chose rather to employ much of his 
time in the exercise, and much of his immortal 
wit in the praise and instructions of a rustic life ; 
who, though he had written before whole books of 
Pastorals and Georgics, could not abstain in his 
great and imperial poem from describing Evander, 
one of his best princes, as living just after the 
homely manner of an ordinary countryman. He 
seats him in a throne of maple, and lays him but 
upon a bear's skin, the kine and oxen are lowing 
in his courtyard, the birds under the eaves of his 
window call him up in the morning ; and when he 
goes abroad only two dogs go along with him for 
his guard. At last, when he brings ^Eneas into 
his royal cottage, he makes him say this memo- 
rable compliment, greater than ever yet was 
spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre, or our White- 
hall. 

HceC) inyuit, limina victor 
Alcides subiit, Thbc ilium Regia cepit, 



SO COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

Aude, Hospes, contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum 
Finge Deo, rebusque veni non asper egenis. 

This humble roof, this rustic court, said he, 
Received Alcides crowned with victory. 
Scorn not, great guest, the steps where he has trod, 
. But contemn wealth, and imitate a god. 

The next man whom we are much obliged to, 
both for his doctrine and example, if* the next best 
poet in the world to Virgil : his dear friend Horace, 
who, when Augustus had desired Mecsenas to per- 
suade him to come and live domestically and at 
the same table with him, and to be Secretary of 
State of the whole world under him, or rather 
jointly with him (for he says, " ut nos in Epistolis 
scribendis adjuvet") could not be tempted to forsake 
his Sabine or Tiburtine Manor, for so rich and so 
glorious a trouble. There was never, I think, such 
an example as this in the world, that he should 
have so much moderation and courage as to refuse 
an offer of such greatness, and the Emperor so 
much generosity and good nature as not to be at 
all offended with his refusal, but to retain still the 



OF AGRICULTURE. 81 

same kindness, and express it often to him in most 
friendly and familiar letters, part of which are still 
extant. If I should produce all the passages of 
this excellent author upon the several subjects 
which I treat of in this book, I must be obliged to 
translate half his works ; of which I may say more 
truly than, in my opinion, he did of Horner, " Qui 
quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid 
non 9 plenius, et melius Chrj/sippo, et Crantore 
dicit" I shall content myself upon this particular 
theme with three only, one out of his Odes, the 
other out of his Satires, the third out of his 
Epistles, and shall forbear to collect the suffrages 
of all other poets, which may be found scattered up 
and down through all their writings, and especially 
in Martial's. But I must not omit to make some 
excuse for the bold undertaking of my own un- 
skilful pencil upon the beauties of a face that has 
been drawn before by so many great masters, 
especially that I should dare to do it in Latin 
verses (though of another kind) and have the con- 
fidence to translate them. I can only say that I 



82 cowley's essays. 

love the matter, and that ought to cover many 
faults ; and that I run not to contend with those 
before me. but follow to applaud them. 



Virg. Georg. 

Ofortunatus nimium^ etc. 

A TRANSLATION OUT OF VIKGIL. 

Oh happy (if his happiness he knows) 

The country swain, on whom kind Heaven bestows 

At home all riches that wise Nature needs; 

Whom the just earth with easy plenty feeds 

'Tis true, no morning tide of clients comes, 

And fills the painted channels of his rooms, 

Adoring the rich figures, as they pass, 

In tapestry wrought, or cut in living brass ; 

Nor is his wool superfluously dyed 

With the dear poison of Assyrian pride : 

Nor do Arabian perfumes vainly spoil 

The native use and sweetness of his oil. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 83 

Instead of these, his calm and harmless life, 
Free from th' alarms of fear, and storms of strife, 
Does with substantial blessedness abound, 
And the soft wings of peace cover him round : 
Through artless grots the murmuring waters glide ; 
Thick trees both against heat and cold provide, 
From whence the birds salute him ; and his ground 
With lowing herds, and bleating sheep does sound ; 
And all the rivers, and the forests nigh, 
Both food and game and exercise supply. 
Here a well-hardened, active youth we see, 
Taught the great art of cheerful poverty. 
Here, in this place alone, there still do shine 
Some streaks of love, both human and divine ; 
From hence Astrsea took her flight, and here 
Still her last footsteps upon earth appear. 
Tis true, the first desire which does control 
All the inferior wheels that move my soul, 
Is, that the Muse me her high priest would make ; 
Into her holiest scenes of mystery take, 
And open there to my mind's purged eye 
Those wonders which to sense the gods deny; 



84 cowley's essays. 

How in the moon such chance of shapes is found : 

The moon, the changing world's eternal bound. 

What shakes the solid earth, what strong disease 

Dares trouble the firm centre's ancient ease ; 

What makes the sea retreat, and what advance : 

Varieties too regular for chance. 

What drives the chariot on. of winter's light, 

And stops the lazy waggon of the night. 

But if my dull and frozen blood deny 

To send forth spirits that raise a soul so high ; 

In the next place, let woods and rivers be 

My quiet, though unglorious, destiny, 

In life's cool vale let my low scene be laid ; 

Cover me, gods, with Tempe's thickest shade. 

Happy the man, I grant, thrice happy he 

Who can through gross effects their causes see : 

Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs, 

"Nov vainly fears inevitable things : 

But does his walk of virtue calmly go, 

Through all th' alarms of death and hell below. 

Happy ! but next such conquerors, happy they, 

Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 85 

They unconcerned from their safe distant seat 
Behold the rods and sceptres of the great. 
The quarrels of the mighty, without fear, 
And the descent of foreign troops they hear. 
Nor can even Rome their steady course misguide, 
With all the lustre of her perishing pride. 
Them never yet did strife or avarice draw 
Into the noisy markets of the law, 
The camps of gowned war, nor do they live 
By rules or forms that many mad men give, 
Duty for nature's bounty they repay, 
And her sole laws religiously obey. 

Some with bold labour plough the faithless main ; 
Some rougher storms in princes' courts sustain. 
Some swell up their slight sails with popular fame, 
Charmed with the foolish whistlings of a name. 
Some their vain wealth to earth again commit ; 
With endless cares some brooding o'er it sit. 
Country and friends are by some wretches sold, 
To lie on Tyrian beds and drink in gold ; 
No price too high for profit can be shown ; 
Not brother's blood, nor hazards of their own. 



8b COWLEY S ESSAYS. 

Around the world in search of it they roam ; 
It makes e'en their Antipodes their home. 
Meanwhile, the prudent husbandman is found 
In mutual duties striving with his ground ; 
And half the year he care of that does take 
That half the year grateful returns does make. 
Each fertile month does some new gifts present, 
And with new work his industry content : 
This the young lamb, that the soft fleece doth yield, 
This loads with hay, and that with corn the field : 
All sorts of fruit crown the rich autumn's pride : 
And on a swelling hill's warm stony side, 
The powerful princely purple of the vine, 
Twice dyed with the redoubled sun. does shine. 
In th' evening to a fair ensuing day, 
With joy he sees his flocks and kids to play, 
And loaded kine about his cottage stand, 
Inviting with known sound the milker's hand ; 
And when from wholesome labour he doth come, 
With wishes to be there, and wished for home, 
He meets at door the softest human blisses, 
His chaste wife's welcome, and dear children's kisses. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 87 

When any rural holy clays invite 

His genius forth to innocent delight, 

On earths fair bed beneath some sacred shade, 

Amidst his equal friends carelessly laid, 

He sings thee, Bacchus, patron of the vine, 

The beechen bowl foams with a flood of wine, 

Not to the loss of reason or of strength. 

To active games and manly sport at length 

Their mirth ascends, and with filled veins they 

see, 
Who can the best at better trials be. 
Such was the life the prudent Sabine chose, 
From such the old Etrurian virtue rose. 
Such, Remus and the god his brother led, 
From such firm footing Home grew the world's 

head. 
Such was the life that even till now does raise 
The honour of poor Saturn's golden days : 
Before men born of earth and buried there, 
Let in the sea their mortal fate to share, 
Before new ways of perishing were sought, 
Before unskilful death on anvils wrought. 



COWLEY S ESSAYS. 



Before those beasts which human life sustain, 
By men, unless to the gods* use, were slain. 



Horat. Epodon. 
Beatus ille qui procul, etc. 
Happy the man whom bounteous gods allow 
With his own hand paternal grounds to plough ! 
Like the first golden mortals, happy he, 
From business and the cares of money free ! 
No human storms break off at land his sleep, 
No loud alarms of nature on the deep. 
From all the cheats of law he lives secure, 
Nor does th' affronts of palaces endure. 
Sometimes the beauteous marriageable vine 
He to the lusty bridegroom elm does join ; 
Sometimes he lops the barren trees around, 
And grafts new life into the fruitful wound ; 
Sometimes he shears his flock, and sometimes he 
Stores up the golden treasures of the bee. 
He sees his lowing herds walk o'er the plain, 
Whilst neighbouring hills low back to them again. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 89 

And when the season, rich as well as gay. 
All her autumnal bounty does display, 
How is he pleas'd th' increasing use to see 
Of his well trusted labours bend the tree ; 
Of which large shares, on the glad sacred days, 
He gives to friends, and to the gods repays. 
With how much joy does he, beneath some shade 
By aged trees, reverend embraces made, 
His careless head on the fresh green recline, 
His head uncharged with fear or with design. 
By him a river constantly complains, 
The birds above rejoice with various strains, 
And in the solemn scene their orgies keep 
Like dreariTs mixed with the gravity of sleep, 
Sleep which does always there for entrance wait, 
And nought within against it shuts the gate. 

Nor does the roughest season of the sky, 
Or sullen Jove, all sports to him deny. 
He runs the mazes of the nimble hare, 
His well-mouthed dogs' glad concert rends the air, 
Or with game bolder, and rewarded more, 
He drives into a toil the foaming boar ; 



90 cowley's essays. 

Here flies the hawk to assault, and there the net 
To intercept the travelling fowl is set ; 
And all his malice, all his craft is shown 
In innocent wars, on beasts and birds alone. 
This is the life from all misfortune free, 
From thee, the great one, tyrant love, from thee ; 
And if a chaste and clean though homely wife, 
Be added to the blessings of this life, — 
Such as the ancient sun-burnt Sabines were, 
Such as Apulia, frugal still, does bear, — 
Who makes her children and the house her care, 
And joyfully the work of life does share ; 
Nor thinks herself too noble or too fine 
To pin the sheepfold or to milk the kine ; 
Who waits at door against her husband come 
From rural duties, late, and wearied home, 
Where she receives him with a kind embrace, 
A cheerful fire, and a more cheerful face : 
And fills the bowl up to her homely lord, 
And with domestic plenty loads the board. 
Not all the lustful shell-fish of the sea, 
Dressed by the wanton hand of luxury, 



OF AGRICULTURE. 91 

Nor ortolans nor god wits nor the rest 
Of costly names that glorify a feast, 
Are at the princely tables better cheer 
Than lamb and kid, lettuce and olives, here. 



THE COUNTRY MOUSE. 

A Paraphrase upon Horace, II Book, Satire vi. 

At the large foot of a fair hollow tree, 
Close to ploughed ground, seated commodiously, 
His ancient and hereditary house, 
There dwelt a good substantial country mouse : 
Frugal, and grave, and careful of the main, 
Yet one who once did nobly entertain 
A city mouse, well coated, sleek, and gay, 
A mouse of high degree, which lost his way, 
Wantonly walking forth to take the air, 
And arrived early, and alighted there, 
For a day's lodging. The good hearty host 



92 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 

(The ancient plenty of his hall to boast) 
Did all the stores produce that might excite, 
With various tastes, the courtier's appetite. 
Fitches and beans, peason, and oats, and wheat, 
And a large chestnut, the delicious meat 
Which Jove himself, were he a mouse, would eat. 
And for a haut goust there was mixed with tluse 
The swerd of bacon, and the coat of cheese, 
The precious relics, which at harvest he 
Had gathered from the reapers' luxury. 
"Freely," said he, "fall on, and never spare, 
The bounteous gods will for to-morrow care." 
And thus at ease on beds of straw they lay, 
And to their genius sacrificed the day. 
Yet the nice guest's epicurean mind 
(Though breeding made him civil seem, and kind) 
Despised this country feast, and still his thought 
Upon the cakes and pies of London wrought. 
" Your bounty and civility," said he, 
"Which I'm surprised in these rude parts to see, 
Show that the gods have given you a mind 
Too noble for the fate which here you find. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 93 

Why should a soul, so virtuous and so great, 
Lose itself thus in an obscure retreat ? 
Let savage beasts lodge in a country den, 
You should see towns, and manners know, and men ; 
And taste the generous luxury of the court, 
Where all the mice of quality resort ; 
Where thousand beauteous shes about you move, 
And by high fare are pliant made to love. 
We all ere long must render up our breath, 
No cave or hole can shelter us from death. 
Since life is so uncertain and so short, 
Let's spend it all in feasting and in sport. 
Come, worthy sir, come with me, and partake 
All the great things that mortals happy make." 

Alas, what virtue hath sufficient arms 
To oppose bright honour and soft pleasure's charms? 
What wisdom can their magic force repel ? 
It draws the reverend hermit from his cell. 
It was the time, when witty poets tell, 
That Phoebus into Thetis' bosom fell : 
She blushed at first, and then put out the light, 
And drew the modest curtains of the night. 



94 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

Plainly the truth to tell, the sun was set, 
When to the town our wearied travellers get. 
To a lord's house, as lordly as can be, 
Made for the use of pride and luxury, 
They come ; the gentle courtier at the door 
Stops, and will hardly enter in before ; — 
But 'tis, sir, your command, and being so, 
I'm sworn t' obedience — and so in they go. 
Behind a hanging in a spacious room 
(The richest work of Mortlake's noble loom") 
They wait awhile their wearied limbs to rest, 
Till silence should invite them to their feast, 
About the hour that Cynthia's silver light 
Had touched the pale meridies of the night, 
At last, the various supper being done, 
It happened that the company was gone 
Into a room remote, servants and all, 
To please their noble fancies with a ball. 
Our host leads forth his stranger, and does find 
All fitted to the bounties of his mind. 
Still on the table half-filled dishes stood, 
And with delicious bits the floor was strewed : 



OF AGRICULTURE. 95 

The courteous mouse presents him with the best, 
And both with fat varieties are blest. 
The industrious peasant everywhere does range, 
And thanks .the gods for his life's happy change. 
Lo, in the midst of a well-freighted pie 
They both at last glutted and wanton lie, 
When see the sad reverse of prosperous fate, 
And what fierce storms on mortal glories wait ! 
With hideous noise, down the rude servants come, 
Six dogs before run barking into th' room ; 
The wretched gluttons fly with wild affright, 
And hate the fulness which retards their flight. 
Our trembling peasant wishes now in vain 
That rocks and mountains covered him again. 
Oh, how the change of his poor life he cursed ! 
" This, of all lives," said he, " is sure the worst. 
Give me again, ye gods, my cave and wood ; 
With peace, let tares and acorns be my food." 



96 cowley's essays. 

A Paraphrase upon the Eightieth Epistle of the First 
Book of Horace. 

HORACE TO FUSCUS ARISTIUS. 

Health, from the lover of the country, me, 
Health, to the lover of the city, thee, 
A difference in our souls, this only proves, 
In all things else, we agree like married doves. 
Bat the warm nest and crowded dove house thou 
Dost like ; I loosely fly from bough to bough, 
And rivers drink, and all the shining day, 
Upon fair trees or mossy rocks I play ; 
In fine, I live and reign when I retire 
From all that you equal with heaven admire. 
Like one at last from the priest's service fled, 
Loathing the honied cakes, I long for bread. 
Would I a house for happiness erect, 
Nature alone should be the architect. 
She'd build it more convenient than great, 
And doubtless in the country choose her seat. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 97 

Is there a place doth better helps supply 
Against the wounds of winter's cruelty ] 
Is there an air that gentler does assuage 
The mad celestial dog's or lion's rage ] 
Is it not there that sleep (and only there) 
Xor noise without, nor cares within does fear ? 
Does art through pipes a purer water bring 
Than that which nature strains into a spring? 
Can all your tapestries, or your pictures, show 
More beauties than in herbs and flowers do grow ? 
Fountains and trees our wearied pride do please, 
Even in the midst of gilded palaces. 
And in your towns that prospect gives delight 
Which opens round the country to our sight. 
Men to the good, from which they rashly fly, 
Return at last, and their wild luxury 
Does but in vain with those true joys contend 
Which nature did to mankind recommend. 
The man who changes gold for burnished brass, 
Or small right gems for larger ones of glass, 
Is not, at length, more certain to be made 
Ridiculous and wretched by the trade, 
d— 28 



yo COWLSYS ESSAYS. 

Than he who sells a solid good to buy 

The painted goods of pride and vanity. 

If thou be wise, no glorious fortune choose, 

Which 't is but pain to keep, yet grief to lose. 

For when we place even trifles in the heart, 

With trifles too unwillingly we part. 

An humble roof, plain bed, and homely board, 

More clear, untainted pleasures do afford 

Than all the tumult of vain greatness brings 

To kings, or to the favourites of kings. 

The horned deer, by nature armed so well, 

Did with the horse in common pasture dwell ; 

And when they fought, the field it always won, 

Till the ambitious horse begged help of man, 

And took the bridle, and thenceforth did reign 

Bravely alone, as lord of all the plain : 

But never after could the rider get 

Erom off his back, or from his mouth the bit. 

So they, who poverty too much do fear, 

To avoid that weight, a greater burden bear ; 

That they might power above their equals have, 

To cruel masters they themselves enslave. 



OF AGRICULTURE. 99 

For gold, their liberty exchanged we see, 
That fairest flower which crowns humanity. 
And all this mischief does upon them light, 
Only because they know- not how aright 
That great, but secret, happiness to prize, 
That's laid up in a little, for the wise : 
That is the best and easiest estate 
Which to a man sits close, but not too strait. 
Tis like a shoe : it pinches, and it burns, 
Too narrow; and too large it overturns. 
My dearest friend, stop thy desires at last, 
And cheerfully enjoy the wealth thou hast. 
And, if me still seeking for more you see, 
Chide and reproach, despise and laugh at me. 
Money was made, not to command our will, 
But all our lawful pleasures to fulfil. 
Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey ; 
The horse doth with the horseman run away. 



100 cowley's essays. 



THE COUNTRY LIFE. 

Libr. 4, Pkontarum. 

Blest be the man (and blest he is) whom e'er 

(Placed far out of the roads of hope or fear) 

A little field and little garden feeds ; 

The field gives all that frugal nature needs, 

The wealthy garden liberally bestows 

All she can ask, when she luxurious grows. 

The specious inconveniences, that wait 

Upon a life of business and of state, 

He sees (nor does the sight disturb his rest) 

By fools desired, by wicked men possessed. 

Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise) 

The old Corycian yeoman passed his days, 

Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent : 

The ambassadors which the great emperor sent 

To offer him a crown, with wonder found 

The reverend gardener hoeing of his ground ; 

Unwillingly and slow, and discontent, 



OF AGRICULTURE. 101 

From his loved cottage to a throne he went. 

And oft he stopped in his triumphant way, 

And oft looked back, and oft was heard to say, 

Not without sighs, " Alas ! I there forsake 

A happier kingdom than I go to take." 

Thus Aglaiis (a man unknown to men, 

But the gods knew, and therefore loved him then) 

Thus lived obscurely then without a name, 

Aglaiis, now consigned to eternal fame. 

For Gyges, the rich king, wicked and great, 

Presumed at wise Apollo's Delphic seat, 

Presumed to ask, " O thou, the whole world's eye, 

Seest thou a man that happier is than 1 1 " 

The god, who scorned to flatter man, replied, 

" Aglaiis happier is." But Gyges cried, 

In a proud rage, u Who can that Aglaiis be ? 

We have heard as yet of no such king as he." 

And true it was, through the whole earth around 

No king of such a name was to be found. 

" Is some old hero of that name alive, 

Who his high race does from the gods derive ? 

Is it some mighty general that has done 



102 Cowley's essays. 

Wonders in fight, and god-like honours won 1. 
Is it some man of endless wealth 1 " said he ; 
" None, none of these : who can this Aglaiis be 1 * 
After long search, and vain inquiries passed, 
In an obscure Arcadian vale at last 
(The Arcadian life has always shady been) 
Near Sopho's town (which he but once had seen) 
This Aglaiis, who m6narchs' envy drew, 
Whose happiness the gods stood witness to, 
This mighty Aglaiis was labouring found, 
With his own hands, in his own little ground. 

So, gracious God (if it may lawful be, 
Among those foolish gods to mention Thee), 
So let me act, on such a private stage, 
The last dull scenes of my declining age ; 
After long toils and voyages in vain, 
This quiet port let my tossed vessel gain ; 
Of heavenly rest this earnest to me lend, 
Let my life sleep, and learn to love her end. 



103 



THE G-AKDEN. 

To J. Evelyn, Esquire. 



I never had any other desire so strong, and so like 
to covetousness, as that one which I have had 
always, that I might be master at last of a small 
house and large garden, with very moderate con- 
veniences joined to them, and there dedicate the 
remainder of my life only to the culture of them 
and the study of nature. 

And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole 

and entire to lie, 
In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty. 

"Or, as Yirgil has said, shorter and better for 
me, that I might there studiis florere ignobilis 
otii, though I could wish that he had rather said 
Nobilis otii when he spoke of his own. But 
several accidents of my ill fortune have disappointed 



104 cowley's essays. 

me hitherto, and do still, of that felicity ; for 
though I have made the first and hardest step 
to it, by abandoning all ambitions and hopes in 
this world, and by retiring from the noise of all 
business and almost company, yet I stick still in 
the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds 
and rubbish, and without that pleasantest work of 
human industry — the improvement of something 
which we call (not very properly, but yet we call) 
our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am 
not arrived at my little Zoar. " Oh, let me escape 
thither (is it not a little one ?), and my soul 
shall live." I do not look back yet ; but I have 
been forced to stop and make too many halts. 
You may wonder, sir (for this seems a little too 
extravagant and Pindarical for prose) what I mean 
by all this preface. It is to let you know, that 
though I have missed, like a chemist, my great 
end, yet I account my affections and endeavours 
well rewarded by something that I have met with 
by-the-by, which is. mat they have produced to me 
some part in ycur kindness and esteem ; and 



THE GARDEN. 105 

thereby the honour of having my name so 
advantageously recommended to posterity by the 
epistle you are pleased to prefix to the most useful 
book that has been written in that kind, and 
which is to last as long as months and years. 

Among many other arts and excellencies which 
you enjoy, I am glad to find this favourite of mine 
the most predominant, that you choose this for 
your wife, though you have hundreds of other arts 
for your concubines ; though you know them, and 
beget sons upon them all (to which you are rich 
enough to allow great legacies), yet the issue of 
this seems to be designed by you to the main of 
the estate ; you have taken most pleasure in it, 
and bestowed most charges upon its education, and 
I doubt not to see that book which you are 
pleased to promise to the world, and of which you 
have given us a large earnest in your calendar, as 
accomplished as anything can be expected from an 
extraordinary wit and no ordinary expenses and 
a long experience. I know nobody that possesses 
more private happiness than you do in your 



103 COWLEY-S ESSAYS. 

garden, and yet no man who makes his happiness 
more public by a free communication of the art 
and knowledge of it to others. All that I myself 
am able yet to do is only to recommend to mankind 
the search of that felicity which you instruct them 
how to find and to enjoy. 



Happy art thou whom God does bless 
With the full choice of thine own happiness ; 

And happier yet, because thou'rt blessed 

With prudence how to choose the best. 
In books and gardens thou hast placed aright, — 

Things which thou well dost understand, 
And both dost make with thy laborious hand — 

Thy noble, innocent delight, 
And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost 
meet 

Both pleasures more refined and sweet : 

The fairest garden in her looks, 

And in her mind the wisest books. 
Oh ! who would change these soft, yet solid joys, 



THE GARDEN. 107 

For empty shows and senseless noise, 
And all which rank ambition breeds, 
Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such 
poisonous weeds ! 

II. 

When God did man to his own likeness make, 
As much as clay, though of the purest kind 
By the Great Potter's art refined, 
Could the Divine impression take, 
He thought it fit to place him where 
A kind of heaven, too, did appear, 
As far as earth could such a likeness bear. 

That Man no happiness might want, 
Which earth to her first master could afford, 

He did a garden for him plant 
By the quick hand of his omnipotent word, 
As the chief help and joy of human life, 
He gave him the first gift ; first, even, before a 
wife. 



108 cowley's essays. 

in. 

For God, the universal architect, 
'T had been as easy to erect 

A Louvre, or Escurial, or a tower 

That might with heaven communication hold. 

As Babel vainly thought to do of old. 

He wanted not the skill or power, 

In the world's fabric those were shown, 

And the materials were all his own. 

But well he knew what place would best agree 

With innocence and with felicity 

And we elsewhere still seek for them in vain. 

If any part of either yet remain, 

If any part of either we expect, 

This may our judgment in the search direct; 

God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain. 

IV. 

Oh, blessed shades ! Oh, gentle, cool retreat 

From all the immoderate heat, 
In which the frantic world does burn and sweat t 
This does the lion-star, Ambition's rage ; 



THE GARDEN 1 . 109 

This Avarice, the dog-star's thirst assuage ; 
Everywhere else their fatal power we see, 
They make and rule man's wretched destiny ; 
They neither set nor disappear, 
But tyrannise o'er all the year ; 
Whilst we ne'er feel their flame or influence here. 

The birds that dance from bough to bough, 

And sing above in every tree, 

Are not from fears and cares more free, 
Than we who lie, or sit, or walk below, 

And should by right be singers too. 
What prince's choir of music can excel 

That which within this shade does dwell, 

To which we nothing pay or give — 

They, like all other poets, live 
Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains. 

'Tis well if they become not prey. 
The whistling winds add their less artful strains, 
And a grave base the murmuring fountains play. 
Nature does all this harmony bestow ; 

But to our plants, art's music too, 
The pipe, theorbo, and guitar we owe ; 



110 cowley's essays. 

The lute itself, which once was green and mute, 
When Orpheus struck the inspired lute, 
The trees danced round, and understood 
By sympathy the voice of wood. 

V. 

These are the spells that to kind sleep invite, 
And nothing does within resistance make ; 

Which yet we moderately take ; 

Who would not choose to be awake, 
While he's encompassed round with such delight ; 
To the ear, the nose, the touch, the taste and sight 1 
When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep 
A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep, 
She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread, 

As the most soft and sweetest bed ; 
Not her own lap would more have charmed his 

head. 
Who that has reason and his smell 
Would not among roses and jasmine dwell, 
Rather than all his spirits choke, 
With exhalations of dirt and smoke, 



THE GARDEN. Ill 

And all the uncleanness which does drown 
In pestilential clouds a populous town ? 
The earth itself breathes better perfumes here, 
Than all the female men or women there, 
Not without cause, about them bear. 

When Epicurus to the world had taught 
That pleasure was the chiefest good, 

(And was perhaps i' th' right, if rightly understood) 
His life he to his doctrine brought, 

And in a garden's shade that sovereign pleasure 
sought. 

Whoever a true epicure would be, 

May there find cheap and virtuous luxury. 

Vitellius his table, which did hold 

As many creatures as the Ark of old, 

That fiscal table, to which every day 

All countries did a constant tribute pay, 

Could nothing more delicious afford 
Than Nature's liberality, 

Helped with a little art and industry, 



112 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

Allows the meanest gardener's board. 
The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose 
For which the grape or melon she would lose, 
Though all the inhabitants of sea and air 
Be listed in the glutton's bill of fare ; 
Yet still the fruits of earth we see 
Placed the third storey high in all her luxury. 

VII. 

But with nonsense the garden does comply, 
None courts or flatters, as it does the eye ; 
When the great Hebrew king did almost strain 
The wondrous treasures of his wealth and brain 
His royal southern guest to entertain, 

Though she on silver floors did tread, 
With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread 
To hide the metal's poverty ; 
Though she looked up to roofs of gold, 
And nought around her could behold 
But silk and rich embroidery, 
And Babylonian tapestry, 
And wealthy Hiram's princely dye : 



THE GARDEN. 113 

Though Ophir's starry stones met everywhere her 

eye; 
Though she herself and her gay host were, dressed 
With all the shining glories of the East ; 
When lavish art her costly work had done ; 

The honour and the prize of bravery 
Was by the Garden from the Palace won ; 
And every rose and lily there did stand 

Better attired by Nature's hand : 
The case thus judged against the king we see, 
By one that would not be so rich, though wiser far 
than he. 

VIII. 

Nor does this happy place only dispense 
Such various pleasures to the sense : 
Here health itself does live, 
That salt of life, which does to all a relish give, 
Its standing pleasure, and intrinsic wealth, 
The body's virtue, and the soul's good fortune, 

health. 
The tree of life, when it in Eden stooa, 



114 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

Did its immortal head to heaven rear ; 

It lasted a tall cedar till the flood ; 

Now a small thorny shrub it does appear ; 

Nor will it thrive too everywhere : 

It always here is freshest seen, 

'Tis only here an evergreen. 

If through the strong and beauteous fence 

Of temperance and innocence, 
And wholesome labours and a quiet mind, 

Any diseases passage find, 

They must not think here to assail 

A land unarmed, or without a guard ; 
They must fight for it, and dispute it hard, 

Before they can prevail. 

Scarce any plant is growing here 
"Which against death some weapon does not 
bear, 

Let cities boast that they provide 

For life the ornaments of pride ; 

But 'tis the country and the field 

That furnish it with staff and shield. 



THE GARDEN. 115 

IX. 

Where does the wisdom and the power divine 
In a more bright and sweet reflection shine ? 
Where do we finer strokes and colours see 
Of the Creator's real poetry, 

Than when we with attention look 
Upon the third day's volume of the book] 
If we co aid open and intend our eye, 

We all like Moses should espy 
Even in a bush the radiant Deity. 
But we despise these his inferior ways 
Though no less full of miracle and praise ; 

Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze, 
The stars of earth no wonder in us raise, 

Though these perhaps do more than they 
The life of mankind sway. 
Although no part of mighty Nature be 
More stored with beauty, power, and mystery, 
Yet to encourage human industry, 
God has so ordered that no other part 
Such space and such dominion leaves for art. 



116 cowley's essays. 

x. 

We nowhere art do so triumphant see, 

As when it grafts or buds the tree ; 
In other things we count it to excel, 
If it a docile scholar can appear 
To Nature, and but imitate her well : 
It over- rules, and is her master here. 
It imitates her Maker's power divine, 
And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does 

refine : 
It does, like grace, the fallen tree restore 
To its blest state of Paradise before : 
"Who would not joy to see his conquering hand 
O'er all the vegetable world command, 
And the wild giants of the wood receive 

What laws he's pleased to give ? 
He bids the ill-natured crab produce 
The gentler apple's winy juice, 

The golden fruit that worthy is, 

Of Galatea's purple kiss ; 

He does the savage hawthorn teach 



THE GARDEN. 117 

To bear the medlar and the pear ; 
He bids the rustic plum to rear 
A noble trunk, and be a peach. 
Even Daphne's coyness he does mock, 
And weds the cherry to her stock, 
Though she refused Apollo's suit, 
Even she, that chaste and virgin tree, 
Now wonders at herself to see 
That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit. 

XI. 

Methinks I see great Diocletian walk 
In the Salonian garden's noble shade, 
Which by his own imperial hands was made : 
I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk 
With the ambassadors, who come in vain, 

To entice him to a throne again. 
"If I, my friends," said he, " should to you 

show 
All the delights which in these gardens grow ; 
'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay, 
Than 'tis that you should carry me away ; 



118 cowley's essays. 

And trust me not, my friends, if every day 

I walk not here with more delight, 
Than ever, after the most happy fight, 
In triumph to the Capitol I rode, 
To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost 
a god. 



119 



OF GKEATNESS 

Since we cannot attain to greatness, says the Sieur 
de Montaigne, let us have our revenge by railing at 
it; this he spoke but in jest. I believe he desired 
it no more than I do, and had less reason, for he 
enjoyed so plentiful and honourable a fortune in a 
most excellent country, as allowed him all the real 
conveniences of it, separated and purged from the 
incommodities. If I were but in his condition, I 
should think it hard measure, without being con- 
vinced of any crime, to be sequestered from it and 
made one of the principal officers of state. But 
the reader may think that what I now say is of 
small authority, because I never was, nor ever 
shall be, put to the trial ; I can therefore only 
make my protestation. 

If ever I more riches did desire 

Than cleanliness and quiet do require ; 



120 cowley's essays. 

If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat, 
With, any wish so mean as to be great, 
Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove 
The humble blessings of that life I love. 

I know very many men will despise, and some 
pity me, for this humour, as a poor-spirited fellow ; 
but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for 
being so. Dii bene fecerunt inopis me, quodque 
pusilli finxerunt animi. I confess I love littleness 
almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a 
little cheerful house, a little company, and a very 
little feast ; and if I were ever to fall in love again 
(which is a great passion, and therefore I hope I 
have done with it) it would be, I think, with 
prettiness rather than with majestical beauty. I. 
would neither wish that my mistress, nor my for- 
tune, should be a bona roba, nor, as Homer used to 
describe his beauties, like a daughter of great 
Jupiter, for the stateliness and largeness of her 
person, but, as Lucretius says, " Parvula, pumilio, 
XapiTwv fxia, tota merum sal." 

Where there is one man of this, I believe there 



OF GREATNESS. 121 

are a thousand of Senecio's mind, whose ridiculous 
affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder describes 
to this effect:. Senecio was a man of a turbid and 
confused wit, who could not endure to speak airy 
but mighty words and sentences, till this humour 
grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather 
disease, as became the sport of the whole town : 
he would have no servants but huge massy fellows, 
no plate or household stuff but thrice as big as the 
fashion ; you may believe me, for I speak it with- 
out raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such 
a madness that he would not put on a pair of 
shoes each of which was not big enough for both 
his feet; he would eat nothing but what was 
great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and 
pound-pears. He kept a concubine that was a very 
giantess, and made her walk, too, always in 
chiopins, till at last he got the surname of Senecio 
Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cog- 
nomen, but his cognomentum. When he declaimed 
for the three hundred Lacedaemonians, who also 
opposed Xerxes' army of above three hundred 



122 cowley's essays. 

thousand, he stretched out his arms and stood on 
tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cried 
out in a very loud voice, " I rejoice, I rejoice ! ', 
We wondered, I remember, what new great fortune 
had befallen his eminence. "Xerxes," says he, 
u is all mine own. He who took away the sight of 
the sea with the canvas veils of so many ships. . .- 
and then he goes on so, as I know not what to 
make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the 
edition, or the orator's own burly way of nonsense. 
This is the character that Seneca gives of this 
hyperbolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and 
yet there are very few men who are not, in some 
things, and to some degree, grandios. Is anything 
more common than to see our ladies of quality 
wear such high shoes as they .cannot walk in with- 
out one to lead them ? and a gown as long again 
as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next 
room without a page or two to hold it up ? I may 
safely say that all the ostentation of our grandees is 
just like a train, of no use in the world, but 
horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is 



OF GREATNESS. 128 

all this but spice of gr audio ? How tedious would 
this be if we were always bound to it? I do 
believe there is no king who would not rather be 
deposed than endure every day of his reign all 
the ceremonies of his coronation. The mightiest 
princes are glad to fly often from these majestic 
pleasures (which is, methinks, no small disparage- 
ment to them), as it were for refuge, to the most 
contemptible divertisements and meanest recrea- 
tions of the vulgar, nay, even of children. One of 
the most powerful and fortunate princes of the 
world of late, could find out no delight so satis- 
factory as the keeping of little singing birds, and 
hearing of them and whistling to them. What did 
the emperors of the whole world 1 If ever any 
men had the free and full enjoyment of all human 
greatness (nay, that would not suffice, for they 
would be gods too) they certainly possessed it ; and 
yet one of them, who styled himself "Lord and 
God of the Earth," could not tell how to pass his 
whole day pleasantly, without spending constant 
two or three hours in catching of flies, and killing 



124 cowley's essays. 

them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been 
Beelzebub. One of his predecessors, !Nero (who 
never put any bounds, nor met with any stop to 
his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime 
more agreeable than to run about the streets all 
night in a disguise, and abuse the women and 
affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to 
beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by 
them. This was one of his imperial nocturnal 
pleasures ; his chief est in the day was to 
sing and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a 
minstrel, upon the public stage ; he was prouder of 
the garlands that were given to his divine voice 
(as they called it then) in those kind of prizes, 
than all his forefathers were of their triumphs 
over nations. He did not at his death complain 
that so mighty an emperor, and the last of all the 
Caesarian race of deities, should be brought to so 
shameful and miserable an end, but only cried out, 
" Alas ! what pity it is that so excellent a musician 
should perish in this manner ! " His uncle 
Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice ; 



OF GREATNESS. 125 

that was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit 
the madnesses of Caligula's delights, and the exe- 
crable sordidness of those of Tiberius. Would one 
think that Augustus himself, the highest and most 
fortunate of mankind, a person endowed too with 
many excellent parts of nature, should be so hard 
put to it sometimes for want of recreations, as to 
be found playing at nuts and bounding-stones with 
little Syrian and Moorish boys, whose company he 
took delight in, for their prating and their wanton- 
ness 1 

Was it for this, that Rome's best blood he spilt, 

With so much falsehood, so much guilt 1 

Was it for this that his ambition strove 

To equal Cassar first, and after Jove ? 

Greatness is barren sure of solid joys ; 

Her merchandise, I fear, is all in toys ; 

She could not else sure so uncivil be, 

To treat his universal majesty, 

His new created Deity, 

With nuts and bounding-stones and boys. 

But we must excuse her for this meagre enter- 
tainment ; she has not really wherewithal to make 
such feasts as we imagine; her guests must be 



126 cowley's essays. 

contented sometimes with but slender cates, and with 
the same cold meats served over and over again, 
even till they become nauseous. When you have 
pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural 
contentment does there remain which may not be 
had with five hundred pounds a year ? not so many 
servants or horses, but a few good ones, which will 
do all the business as well ; not so many choice 
dishes at every meal, but at several meals all of 
them, which makes them both the more- healthy 
and the more pleasant ; not so rich garments nor 
so frequent changes, but as warm and as comely, 
and so frequent change, too, as is every jot as good 
for the master, though not for the tailor or valet- 
de-chambre; not such a stately palace, nor gilt 
rooms, nor the costlier sorts of tapestry, but a con- 
venient brick house, with decent wainscot and 
pretty forest- work hangings. Lastly (for I omit 
all other particulars, and will end with that which 
I love most in both conditions), not whole woods 
cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor fountain or cas- 
cade gardens, but herb and flower and fruit 



OF GREATNESS. 127 

gardens, which are more useful, and the water 
every whit as clear and wholesome as if it darted 
from the breasts of a marble nymph or the urn of 
a river-god. If for all this you like better the 
substance of that former estate of life, do but con- 
sider the inseparable accidents of both : servitude, 
disquiet, danger, and most commonly guilt, in- 
herent in the one ; in the other, liberty, tranquillity, 
security, and innocence : and when you have 
thought upon this, you will confess that to be a 
truth which appeared to you before but a ridicu- 
lous paradox, that a low fortune is better guarded 
and attended than a high one. If, indeed, we 
look only upon the flourishing head of the tree, it 
appears a most beautiful object. 



• Sed quantum vertiee ad auras 



JEtherias, tantum radice ad Tartara tendit. 

As far up towards heaven the branches grow, 
So far the root sinks down to hell below. 

Another horrible disgrace to greatness is, that it 
is for the most part in pitiful want and distress. 



128 cowley's essays. 

What a wonderful thing is this, unless it degenerate 
into avarice, and so cease to be greatness. It falls 
perpetually into such necessities as drive it into all 
the meanest and most sordid ways of borrowing, 
cozenage, and robbery, Mancipiis locopules, eget 
arts Cappadocum Rex. This is the case of almost 
all great men, as well as of the poor King of 
Cappadocia. They abound with slaves, but are 
indigent of money. The ancient Roman emperors, 
who had the riches of the whole world for their 
revenue, had wherewithal to live, one would have 
thought, pretty well at ease, and to have been 
exempt from the pressures of extreme poverty. 
But yet with most of them it was much other- 
wise, and they fell perpetually into such miserable 
penury, that they were forced to devour or squeeze 
most of their friends and servants, to cheat with 
infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their 
provinces. This fashion of imperial grandeur 
is imitated by all inferior and subordinate sorts of 
it, as if it were a point of honour. They must be 
cheated of a third part of their estates, two other 



OF GREATNESS. 129 

thirds they must expend in vanity, so that they 
remain debtors for all the necessary provisions 
of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts 
but out of the succours and supplies of rapine ; " as 
riches increase/' says Solomon, "so do the mouths 
that devour it." The master mouth has no more 
than before ; the owner, methinks, is like Oenus in 
the fable, who is perpetually winding a rope of hay 
and an ass at the end perpetually eating it. Out 
of these inconveniences arises naturally one more, 
which is, that no greatness can be satisfied or con- 
tented with itself : still, if it could mount up a little 
higher, it would be happy ; if it could but gain that 
point, it would obtain all its desires ; but yet at 
last, when it is got up to the very top of the peak 
of Teneriffe, it is in very great danger of breaking 
its neck downwards, but in no possibility of ascend- 
ing upwards into the seat of tranquillity above the 
moon. The first ambitious men in the world, the 
old giants, are said to have made an heroical at- 
tempt of scaling Heaven in despite of the gods, and 
they cast Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, 
e— 28 



130 cowley's essays. 

two or three mountains more they thought would 

have done their business, but the thunder spoiled 

all the work when they were come up to the third 

storey ; 

And what a noble plot was crossed, 
And what a brave design was lost. 

A famous person of their offspring, the late 
giant of our nation, when, from the condition of a 
very inconsiderable captain, he had made himself 
lieutenant-general of an army of little Titans, 
which was his first mountain ; and afterwards 
general, which was his second ; and after that ab- 
solute tyrant of three kingdoms, which was the 
third, and almost touched the heaven which he 
affected ; is believed to have died with grief and dis- 
content because he could not attain to the honest 
name of a king, and the old formality of a crown, 
though he had before exceeded the power by a 
wicked usurpation. If he could have compassed 
that, he would perhaps have wanted something 
else that is necessary to felicity, and pined away 
for the want of the title of an emperor or a god. 



OF GREATNESS. 131 

The reason of this is, that greatness has no reality 
in nature, but is a creature of the fancy — a notion 
that consists only in relation and comparison. It 
is indeed an idol ; but St. Paul teaches us that an 
idol is nothing in the world. There is in truth no 
rising or meridian of the sun, but only in respect 
to several places : there is no right or left, no upper 
hand in nature ; everything is little and everything 
is great according as it is diversely compared. 
There may be perhaps some villages in Scotland or 
Ireland where I might be a great man ; and in that 
case I should be like Csesar — you would wonder 
how Csesar and I should be like one another in 
anything — and choose rather to be the first man of 
the village than second at Rome. Our country is 
called Great Britain, in regard only of a lesser of 
the same name ; it would be but a ridiculous 
epithet for it when we consider it together with 
the kingdom of China. That, too, is but a pitiful 
rood of ground in comparison of the whole earth 
besides; and this whole globe of earth, which we 
account so immense a body, is but one point or 



132 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

atom in relation to those numberless worlds that 
are scattered up and down in the infinite space 
of the sky which we behold. The other many 
inconveniences of grandeur I have spoken of 
dispersedly in several chapters, and shall end this 
with an ode of Horace, not exactly copied but 
rudely imitated. 

Horace. Lib. 3. Ode 1. 

Odi profanum vulgus, etc, 

I. 

Hence, ye profane ; I hate ye all ; 

Both the great vulgar, and the small. 

To virgin minds, which yet their native whiteness 

hold, 
Not yet discoloured with the love of gold 

(That jaundice of the soul, 
Which makes it look so gilded and so foul), 
To you, ye very few, these truths I tell ; 
The muse inspires my song, hark, and observe it 

welL 



OF GKEA.TNESS. 133 

i 

II. 

We look on men, and wonder at such odds 

'Twixt things that were the same by birth ; 

We look on kings as giants of the earth, 

These giants are but pigmies to the gods. 
The humblest bush and proudest oak 

Are but of equal proof against the thunder-stroke. 

Beauty and strength, and wit, and wealth, and 
power 
Have their short flourishing hour, 
And love to see themselves, and smile, 

And joy in their pre-eminence a while ; 
Even so in the same land, 

Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers together stand ; 

Alas, death mows down all with an impartial hand. 

in. 

And all you men, whom greatness does so please, 

Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles. 

If you your eyes could upwards move, 
(But you, I fear, think nothing is above) 
You would perceive by what a little thread 



134 cowley's essays. 

The sword still hangs over your head. 
No tide of wine would drown your cares, 
No mirth or music over-noise your fears ; 
The fear of death would you so watchful keep, 
As not to admit the image of it, sleep. 

IV. 

Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces ; 
And yet so humble, too, as not to scorn 

The meanest country cottages ; 

His poppy grows among the corn. 
The halcyon sleep will never build his nest 

In any stormy breast. 

' Tis not enough that he does find 

Clouds and darkness in their mind ; 

Darkness but half his work will do, 
'Tis not enough ; he must find quiet too. 

V. 

The man who, in all wishes he does make, 

Does only Nature's counsel take, 
That wise and happy man will never fear 



OF GREATNESS. 135 

The evil aspects of the year, 
Nor tremble, though two comets should appear. 
He does not look in almanacks to see, 

Whether he fortunate shall be ; 
Let Mars and Saturn in the heavens conjoin, 
And what they please against the world design, 

So Jupiter within him shine. 

VI. 

If of their pleasures and desires no end be found ; 
God to their cares and fears will set no bound. 

What would content you 1 Who can tell 1 
Ye fear so much to lose what you have got 

As if ye liked it well. 
Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not. 

Go, level hills, and fill up seas, 
Spare nought that may your wanton fancy please ; 

But trust me, when you have done all this, 
Much will be missing still, and much will be 
amiss. 



136 



OP AVAEICE. 



There are two sorts of avarice ; the one is but of 
a bastard kind ; and that is, the rapacious appetite 
of gain, not for its own sake, but for the pleasure 
of refunding it immediately through all the chan- 
nels of pride and luxury. The other is the true 
kind, and properly so called; which is a restless 
and unsatiable desire of riches, not for any further 
end of use, but only to hoard, and preserve, and 
perpetually increase them. The covetous man of 
the first kind is like a greedy ostrich, which de- 
vours any metal, but it is with an intent to feed 
upon it, and in effect it makes a shift to digest and 
excern it. The second is like the foolish chough, 
which loves to steal money only to hide it. The 
first does much harm to mankind, and a little good 
too, to some few. The second does good to none ; 
no, not to himself. The first can make no excuse 



OF AVARICE. 137 

to God, or angels, or rational men for his actions. 
The second can give no reason or colour, not to the 
devil himself, for what he does : he is a slave to 
Mammon without wages. The first makes a shift 
to be beloved ; aye, and envied, too, by some people. 
The second is the universal object of hatred and 
contempt. There is no vice has been so pelted 
with good sentences, and especially by the poets, 
who have pursued it with stories and fables, and 
allegories and allusions ; and moved, as we say, 
every stone to fling at it, among all which, I do not 
remember a more fine and gentleman-like correc- 
tion than that which was given it by one line of 

Ovid's. 

Desunt luxurice multa, avaritice omnia. 

Much is wanting to luxury ; all to avarice. 

To which saying I have a mind to add one member 
and render it thus : — 

Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all 
things. 

Somebody says of a virtuous and wise man, that 



138 cowley's essays. 

having nothing, he has all. This is just his anti- 
pode, who, having all things, yet has nothing. 
He is a guardian eunuch to his beloved gold : 
Audivi eos amatores esse maviimos sed nil potesse. 
They are the fondest lovers, but impotent to 
enjoy. 

And, oh, what man's condition can be worse 
Than his, whom plenty starves, and blessings curse ? 
The beggars but a common fate deplore. 
The rich poor man 's emphatically poor. 

I wonder how it comes to pass that there has 
never been any law made against him. Against 
him, do I say 1 I mean for him, as there is a public 
provision made for all other madmen. It is very 
reasonable that the king should appoint some per- 
sons (and I think the courtiers would not be 
against this proposition) to manage his estate dur- 
ing his life (for his heirs commonly need not that 
care), and out of it to make it their business to see 
that he should not want alimony befitting his 
condition, which he could never get out of his own 



OF AVARICE. 139 

cruel fingers. We relies 'e idle vagrants and coun- 
terfeit beggars, but liave no care at all of these 
really poor men, who are, methinks, to be respect- 
fully treated in regard of their quality. I might 
be endless against them, but I am almost choked 
with the superabundance of the matter. Too 
much plenty impoverishes me as it does them. 
I will conclude this odious subject with part of 
Horace's first Satire, which take in his own fami- 
liar style : — 

I admire, Maecenas, how it comes to pass, 
That no man ever yet contented was, 
Nor is, nor perhaps will be, with that state 
In which his own choice plants him, or his fate. 
Happy the merchant ! the old soldier cries. 
The merchant, beaten with tempestuous skies, 
Happy the soldier ! one half-hour to thee 
Gives speedy death or glorious victory. 
The lawyer, knocked up early from his rest 
By restless clients, calls the peasant blest. 
The peasant, when his labours ill succeed, 



140 cowley's essays. 

Envies the mouth which only talk does feed. 
'Tis not, I think you'll say, that I want store 
Of instances, if here I add no more, 
They are enough to reach at least a mile 
Beyond long Orator Fabius his style. 
But hold, you whom no fortune e'er endears, 
Gentlemen, malcontents, and mutineers, 
"Who bounteous Jove so often cruel call, 
Behold, Jove's now resolved to please you all. 
Thou, soldier, be a merchant ; merchant, thou 
A soldier be ; and lawyer to the plough. 
Change all your stations straight. Why do they 

stay ? 
The devil a man will change now when he may. 
Were I in General Jove's abused case, 
By Jove, I'd cudgel this rebellious race ; 
But he's too good \ be all, then, as you were ; 
However, make the best of what you are, 
And in that state be cheerful and rejoice, 
Which either was your fate or was your choice. 
No ; they must labour yet, and sweat and toil, 
And very miserable be awhile. 



OP AVARICE. 141 

But 'tis with a design only to gain 
What may their age with plenteous ease main- 
tain ; 
The prudent pismire does this lesson teach, 
And industry to lazy mankind preach. 
The little drudge does trot about and sweat, 
Nor does he straight devour all he can get, 
But in his temperate mouth carries it home, 
A stock for winter which he knows must come. 
And when the rolling world to creatures here 
Turns up the deformed wrong side of the year, 
And shuts him in with storms and cold and 

wet, 
He cheerfully does his past labours eat. 
Oh, does he so 1 your wise example, the ant 
Does not at all times rest, and plenty want. 
But, weighing justly a mortal ant's condition, 
Divides his life 'twixt labour and fruition. 
Thee neither heat, nor storms, nor wet, nor cold 
From thy unnatural diligence can withhold, 
To the Indies thou wouldst run rather than see 
Another, though a friend, richer than thee. 



142 Cowley's essays 

Fond man ! what good or beauty can be found 

In heaps of treasure buried under ground ? 

Which, rather than diminished e'er to see, 

Thou wouldst thyself, too, buried with them be : 

And what's the difference 1 is't not quite as bad 

Never to use, as never to have had 1 

In thy vast barns millions of quarters store, 

Thy belly, for all that, will hold no more 

Than mine does. Every baker makes much bread, 

What then] He's with no more than others 

fed. 
Do you within the bounds of Nature live, 
And to augment your own you need not strive , 
One hundred acres will no less for you 
Your life's whole business than ten thousand do. 
But pleasant 'tis to take from a great store ; 
What, man 1 though you're resolved to take no 

more 
Than I do from a small one ; if your will 
Be but a pitcher or a pot to fill, 
To some great river for it must you go, 
When a clear spring just at your feet does flow 1 



OF AVARICE 143 

Give me the spring which does to human use, 

Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce ; 

He who scorns these, and needs will drink at 

Nile, 
Must run the danger of the crocodile ; 
And of the rapid stream itself which may, 
At unawares bear him perhaps away. 
In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin 
Washed o'er in vain, for ever dry within ; 
He catches at the stream with greedy lips, 
From his touched mouth the wanton torment slips. 
You laugh now, and expand your careful brow : 
'Tis finely said, but what's all this to you i 
Change but the name, this fable is thy story, 
Thou in a flood of useless wealth dost glory, 
Which thou canst only touch, but never taste ; 
The abundance still, and still the want does last. 
The treasures of the gods thou wouldst not spare, 
But when they're made thine own, they sacred 

are, 
And must be kept with reverence, as if thou 
No other use of precious gold didst know 



144 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

But that of curious pictures to delight 

With the fair stamp thy virtuoso sight. 

The only true and genuine use is this, 

To buy the things which nature cannot miss 

Without discomfort, oil, and vital bread, 

And wine by which the life of life is fed, 

And all those few things else by which we live ; 

All that remains is given for thee to give. 

If cares and troubles, envy, grief, and fear, 

The bitter fruits be which fair riches bear, 

If a new poverty grow out of store, 

The old plain way, ye gods ! let me be poor. 



A Paraphrase on an Ode in Horace's Third 
Book, beginning thus : — 

" Inclusam Danaen turris ahenea." * 

A tower of brass, one would have said, 

And locks, and bolts, and iron bars, 

And guards as strict as in the heat of wars 



OF AVARICE. 145 

Might have preserved one innocent maidenhood. 
The jealous father thought he well might spare 

All further jealous care ; 
And as he walked, to himself alone he smiled 
To think how Venus' arts he had beguiled ; 
And when he slept his rest was deep, 
But Venus laughed to see and hear him sleep. 
She taught the amorous Jove 
A magical receipt in love, 
Which armed him stronger and which helped him 

more 
Than all his thunder did and his almightyship 
before. 

II. 

She taught him love's elixir, by which art 

His godhead into gold he did convert; 
No guards did then his passage stay, 
He passed with ease, gold was the word ; 

Subtle as lightning, bright, and quick, and fierce, 
Gold through doors and walls did pierce ; 

And as that works sometimes upon the sword, 



146 COWLEY'S ESSAYS 

Melted the maiden dread away, 
Even in the secret scabbard where it lay. 

The prudent Macedonian king, 
To blow up towns, a golden mine did spring ; 

He broke through gates with this petar, 
'Tis the great art of peace, the engine 'tis of 
war, 

And fleets and armies follow it afar ; 
The ensign 'tis at land, and 'tis the seaman's star. 

in. 

Let all the world slave to this tyrant) be, 
Creature to this disguised deity, 
Yet it shall never conquer me. 
A guard of virtues will not let it pass, 
And wisdom is a tower of stronger brass. 
The muses' laurel, round my temples spread, 
Does from this lightning's force secure my head, 
Nor will I lift it up so high, 
As in the violent meteor's way to lie. 
Wealth for its power do we honour and adore ] 
The things we hate, ill fate, and death, have more. 



OP AVARICE. . 147 

IV. 

From towns and courts, camps of the rich and 

great, 
The vast Xerxean army, I retreat, 
And to the small Laconic forces fly 

Which hold the straits of poverty. 
Cellars and granaries in vain we fill 

With all the bounteous summer's store : 
If the mind thirst and hunger still, 

The poor rich man 's emphatically poor. 

Slaves to the things we too much prize, 
We masters grow of all that we despise. 

v. 
A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood, 

Is all the wealth by nature understood. 

The monarch on whom fertile Nile bestows 

All which that grateful earth can bear, 

Deceives himself, if he suppose 
That more than this falls to his share. 
Whatever an estate does beyond this afford, 
Is not a rent paid to the Lord ; 



148 cowley's essays. 

But is a tax illegal and unjust, 
Exacted from it by the tyrant lust. 

Much will always wanting be, 

To him who much desires. Thrice happy lie 
To whom the wise indulgency of Heaven, 

With sparing hand but just enough has given. 



149 



THE DANGKEES OF AN HONEST 
MAN IN MUCH COMPANY. 



If twenty thousand naked Americans were not 
able to resist the assaults of but twenty well-armed 
Spaniards, I see little possibility for one honest 
man to defend himself against twenty thousand 
knaves, who are all furnished cap-ct-pie with the 
defensive arms of worldly prudence, and the offen- 
sive, too, of craft and malice. He will find no less 
odds than this against him if he have much to do 
in human affairs. The only advice, therefore, which 
I can give him is, to be sure not to venture his 
person any longer in the open campaign, to retreat 
and entrench himself, to stop up all avenues, and 
draw up all bridges against so numerous an enemy. 
The truth of it is, that a man in much business 
must either make himself a knave, or else the 
world will make him a fool : and if the injury 



150 COWLEY'S ESSAYS 

went no farther than the being laughed at, a wise 
man would content himself with the revenge of 
retaliation : but the case is much worse, for these 
civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not 
only dance about such a taken stranger, but at last 
devour him. A sober man cannot get too soon out 
of drunken company ; though they be never so kind 
and merry among themselves, it is not unpleasant 
only, but dangerous to him. Do ye wonder that a 
virtuous man should love to be alone ] It is hard 
for him to be otherwise ; he is so, when he is 
among ten thousand \ neither is the solitude so 
uncomfortable to be alone without any other 
creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild 
beasts. Man is to man all kind of beasts — a 
fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a 
robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous 
decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civilest, me- 
thinks, of all nations, are those whom we account 
the most barbarous ; there is some moderation and 
good nature in the Toupinambaltians who eat no 
men but their enemies, whilst we learned and 



DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN. 151 

polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes 
and sharks, prey upon everything that we can 
swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and 
philosophy, that they first congregated men dis- 
persed, united them into societies, and built up the 
houses and the walls of cities. I wish they could 
unravel all they had woven ; that we might have 
our woods and our innocence again instead of our 
castles and our policies. They have assembled 
many thousands of scattered people into one body : 
it is true, they have done so, they have brought them 
together into cities to cozen, and into armies to 
murder one another; they found them hunters 
and fishers of wild creatures, they have made them 
hunters and fishers of their brethren ; they boast 
to have reduced them to a state of peace, when the 
truth is they have only taught them an art of 
war j they have framed, I must confess, wholesome 
laws for the restraint of vice, but they raised first 
that devil which now they conjure and cannot 
bind ; though there were before no punishments 
for wickedness, yet there was less committed 



152 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

because there were no rewards for it. But the 
men who praise philosophy from this topic are 
much deceived ; let oratory answer for itself, the 
tinkling, perhaps, of that may unite a swarm : it 
never was the work of philosophy to assemble 
multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them 
when they were assembled, to make the best of an 
evil, and bring them, as much as is possible, to unity 
again. Avarice and ambition only were the first 
builders of towns, and founders of empire ; they 
said, " Go to, let us build us a city and a tower 
whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make 
us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the 
face of the earth." What was the beginning of 
Rome, the metropolis of all the world 1 what was 
it but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary 
of criminals 1 it was justly named by the augury 
of no less than twelve vultures, and the founder 
cemented his walls with the blood of his brother. 
Not unlike to this was the beginning even of the 
first town, too, in the world, and such is the 
original sin of most cities : their actual increase 



DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN". 153 

daily with their age and growth ; the more people, 
the more wicked all of them. Every one brings in 
his part to inflame the contagion, which becomes at 
last so universal and so strong, that no precepts 
can be sufficient preservatives, nor anything secure 
our safety, but flight from among the infected. 
We ought, in the choice of a situation, to regard 
above all things the healthfulness of the place, and 
the healthfulness of it for the mind rather than 
for the body. But suppose (which is hardly to be 
supposed) we had antidote enough against this 
poison ; nay, suppose, further, we were always and 
at all places armed and provided both against the 
assaults of hostility and the mines of treachery, 
it will yet be but an uncomfortable life to be ever in 
alarms ; though we were compassed round with fire 
to defend ourselves from wild beasts, the lodging 
would be unpleasant, because we must always be 
obliged to watch that fire, and to fear no less the 
defects of our guard than the diligences of our 
enemy. The sum of this is, that a virtuous man is 
in danger to be trod upon and destroyed in the 



154 cowley's essays. 

crowd of his contraries ; nay, which is worse, to be 
changed and corrupted by them, and that it is im- 
possible to escape both these inconveniences with- 
out so much caution as will take away the whole 
quiet, that is, the happiness of his life. Ye see, 
then, what he may lose ; but, I pray, what can he 
get there ] Quid Romce faciam ? Mentiri nescio. 
What should a man of truth and honesty do at 
Rome? he can neither understand, nor speak the 
language of the place ; a naked man may swim in 
the sea, but it is not the way to catch fish there ; 
they are likelier to devour him than he them, if he 
bring no nets and use no deceits. I think, there- 
fore, it was wise and friendly advice which Martial 
gave to Fabian when he met him newly arrived 

at Rome. 

Honest and poor, faithful in word and thought ; 
What has thee, Fabian, to the city brought ? 
Thou neither the buffoon nor bawd canst play, 
Nor with false whispers the innocent betray : 
Nor corrupt wives, nor from rich beldams get 
A living by thy industry and sweat : 
Nor with vain promises and projects cheat, 



DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN. 155 

Nor bribe or flatter any of the great. 

But you're a man of learning, prudent, just : 
A man of courage, firm, and fit for trust. 

Why, you may stay, and live unenvied here ; 
But, 'faith ! go back, and keep you where you were. 

Nay, if nothing of all this were in the case, yet 
the very sight of uncleanness is loathsome to the 
cleanly ; the sight of folly and impiety vexatious 
to the wise and pious. 

Lucretius, by his favour, though a good poet, 
was but an ill-natured man, when he said, " It was 
delightful to see other men in a ' great storm." 
And no less ill-natured should I think Democritus, 
who laughed at all the world, but that he retired 
himself so much out of it that we may perceive 
he took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth. 
I have been drawn twice or thrice by company to 
go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much 
delighted with the fantastical extravagancy 
of so many various madnesses, which upon me 
wrought so contrary an effect, that I always 
returned not only melancholy, but even sick with 



156 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

the sight. My compassion there was perhaps too 
tender, for I meet a thousand madmen abroad, 
without any perturbation, though, to weigh the 
matter justly, the total loss of reason is less de- 
plorable than the total depravation of it. An 
exact judge of human blessings, of riches, honours, 
beauty, even of wit itself, should pity the abuse of 
them more than the want. 

Briefly, though a wise man could pass never 
so securely through the great roads of human life, 
yet he will meet perpetually with so many objects 
and occasions of compassion, grief, shame, anger, 
hatred, indignation, and all passions but envy (for 
he will find nothing to deserve that) that he had 
better strike into some private path ; nay, go so 
far, if he could, out of the common way, ut nee 
facta audiat Pelopidarum; that he might not so 
much as hear of the actions of the sons of Adam. 
But, whither shall we fly, then ? into the deserts, 
like the ancient hermits 1 

Qua terra patet J 'era regnat Erynnis. 
In f acinus jurasse putes. 



DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN. 157 

One would think that all mankind had bound 
themselves by an oath to do all the wickedness 
they can ; that they had all, as the Scripture 
speaks, sold themselves to sin : the difference only is, 
that some are a little more crafty (and but a little, 
God knows) in making of the bargain. I thought, 
when I went first to dwell in the country, that 
without doubt I should have met there with the 
simplicity of the old poetical golden age : I thought 
to have found no inhabitants there, but such as 
the shepherds of Sir Philip Sidney in Arcadia, or 
of Monsieur d'TJrfe upon the banks of Lignon ; 
and began to consider with myself, which way I 
might recommend no less to posterity the happi- 
ness and innocence of the men of Chertsey : but to 
confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by in- 
fallible demonstrations, that I was still in old 
England, and not in Arcadia, or La Forrest ; that 
if I could not content myself with anything less 
than exact fidelity in human conversation, I had 
almost as good go back and seek for it in the 
Court, or the Exchange, or Westminster HalL I 



158 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

ask again, then, whither shall we fly, or what shall 
we do 1 The world may so come in a man's way 
that he cannot choose but salute it ; he must take 
heed, though, not to go a whoring after it. If by 
any lawful vocation or just necessity men happen 
to be married to it, I can only give them St. Paul's 
advice : " Brethren, the time is short ; it remains 
that they that have wives be as though they had 
none. But I would that all men were even as 1 
myself." 

In all cases they must be sure that they do 
mundum ducere, and not mundo nvbere. They 
must retain the superiority and headship over it : 
happy are they who can get out of the sight of 
this deceitful beauty, that they may not be led so 
much as into temptation ; who have not only 
quitted the metropolis, but can abstain from ever 
seeing the next market town of their country. 



DANGERS OP AN HONEST MAN. 159 



CLAUDIAN'S OLD MAN OF VERONA. 



Happy the man who his whole time doth bound 

Within the enclosure of his little ground. 

Happy the man whom the same humble place 

(The hereditary cottage of his race) 

From his first rising infancy has known, 

And by degrees sees gently bending down, 

With natural propension to that earth 

Which both preserved his life, and gave him birth. 

Him no false distant lights by fortune set, 

Could ever into foolish wanderings get. 

He never dangers either saw, or feared, 

The dreadful storms at sea he never heard. 

He never heard the shrill alarms of war, 

Or the worse noises of the lawyers' bar. 

ISTo change of consuls marks to him the year, 

The change of seasons is his calendar. 

The cold and heat winter and summer shows, 

Autumn by fruits, and spring by flowers he knows. 



160 cowley's essays. 

He measures time by landmarks, and has found 

For the whole day the dial of his ground. 

A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees, 

And loves his old contemporary trees. 

Has only heard of near Verona's name, 

And knows it, like the Indies, but by fame. 

Does with, a like concernment notice take 

Of the Red Sea, and of Benacus lake. 

Thus health and strength he to a third age enjoys, 

And sees a long posterity of boys. 

About the spacious world let other roam, 

The voyage Life is longest made at homa 



161 



THE SHOETNESS OF LIFE AND 
UNCEKTAINTY OF EICHES. 

If you should see a man who were to cross from 
Dover to Calais, run about very busy and solicitous, 
and trouble himself many weeks before in making 
provisions for the voyage, would you commend him 
for a cautious and discreet person, or laugh at him 
for a timorous and impertinent coxcomb 1 A man 
who is excessive in his pains and diligence, and who 
consumes the greatest part of his time in furnish- 
ing the remainder with all conveniences and even 
superfluities, is to angels and wise men no less ridi- 
culous ; he does as little consider the shortness of 
his passage that he might proportion his cares ac- 
cordingly. It is, alas, so narrow a strait betwixt 
the womb and the grave, that it might be called the 
Pas de Vie, as well as the Pas de Calais. We are 
all icpriixtpot as Pindar calls us, creatures of a day, 
and therefore our Saviour bounds our desires to that 
f— 28 



162 cowley's essays. 

little space ; as if it were very probable that every- 
day should be our last, we are taught to demand even 
bread for no longer a time. The sun ought not to 
set upon our covetousness, no more than upon our 
anger ; but as to God Almighty a thousand years 
are as one day, so, in direct opposition, one day to 
the covetous man is as a thousand years, tain 
brevi fortis jaculatur cevo multa, so far he shoots 
beyond his butt. One would think he were of the 
opinion of the Millenaries, and hoped for so long a 
reign upon earth. The patriarchs before the flood, 
who enjoyed almost such a life, made, we are sure, 
less stores for the maintaining of it ; they who lived 
nine hundred years scarcely provided for a few days ; 
we who live but a few days, provide at least for 
nine hundred years. What a strange alteration is 
this of human life and manners ! and yet we see 
an imitation of it in every man's particular ex- 
perience, for we begin not the cares of life till it be 
half spent, and still increase them as that decreases. 
What is there among the actions of beasts so illo- 
gical and repugnant to reason? When they do 



SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 163 

anything which seems to proceed from that which 
we call reason, we disdain to allow them that perfec- 
tion, and attribute it only to a natural instinct. If 
we could but learn to number our days (as we are 
taught to pray that we might) we should adjust 
much better our other accounts, but whilst we never 
consider an end of them, it is no wonder if our cares 
for them be without end too. Horace advises very 
wisely, and in excellent good words, spatio brevi 
spem longam reseces ; from a short life cut off all 
hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned 
away like suckers that choke the mother-plant, and 
hinder it from bearing fruit. And in another place 
to the same sense, Vitce summa brevis spem nos 
vetat inchoare longam^ which Seneca does not mend 
when he says, Oh quanta dementia est spes longas 
inchoantium ! but he gives an example there of 
an acquaintance of his named Senecio, who from a 
very mean beginning by great industry in turning 
about of money through all ways of gain, had at- 
tained to extraordinary riches, but died on a sudden 
after hav'ng supped merrily, In ipso actu bene 



164 cowley's essays. 

ced-entium rerum, in ipso procurrentis fortunes 
impetu; in the full course of his good fortune, when 
she had a high tide and a stiff gale and all her sails 
on ; upon which occasion he cries, out of Virgil : 

Insere nunc Meliucee pyros, pone or dine vites : 

G-o to, Melibaeus, now, 

Go graff thy orchards and thy vineyards plant ; 

Behold the fruit ! 

For this Senecio I have no compassion, because he 
was taken, as we say, in ipso facto, still labouring in the 
work of avarice ; but the poor rich man in St. Luke 
(whose case was not like this) I could pity, methinks, 
if the Scripture would permit me, for he seems to 
have been satisfied at last; he confesses he had enough 
for many years ; he bids his soul take its ease ; and 
yet for all that, God says to him, "Thou fool, this 
night thy soul shall be required of thee, and the 
things thou hast laid up, whom shall they belong 
to ? ■' Where shall we find the causes of this bitter 
reproach and terrible judgment ; we may find, I 
think, two, and God perhaps saw more. First, that 



SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 165 

he did not intend true rest to the soul, but only to 
change the employments of it from avarice to 
luxury ; his design is to eat and to drink, and to be 
merry. Secondly, that he went on too long before 
he thought of resting ; the fulness of his old barns 
had not sufficed him, he would stay till he was 
forced to- build new ones, and God meted out to 
him in the same measure ; since he would have more 
riches than his life could contain, God destroyed his 
life and gave the fruits of it to another. 

Thus God takes away sometimes the man from 
his riches, and no less frequently riches from the 
man : what hope can there be of such a marriage 
where both parties are so fickle and uncertain ; by 
what bonds can such a couple be kept long toge- 
ther ? 

I. 

Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must 
quit, 

Or, what is worse, be left by it ? 
Why dost thou load thyself, when thou'rt to fly, 

O man ordained to die % 



166 cowley's essays. 

ii. 

Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high > 

Thou who art underground to lie 1 
Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see ; 

For death, alas ! is sowing thee. 

ill. 

Suppose, thou fortune couldst to tameness bring. 

And clip or pinion her wing ; 
Suppose thou couldst on fate so far prevail 

As not to cut off thy entail. 

IV. 

Yet death at all that subtlety will laugh, 
Death will that foolish gardener mock 

Who does a slight and annual plant engraff, 
Upon a lasting stock. 

V. 

Thou dost thyself wise and industrious deem ; 

A mighty husband thou wouldst seem ; 
Fond man ! like a bought slave, thou, all the while 

Dost but for others sweat and toil. 



SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 167 



VI. 



Officious fool ! that needs must meddling be 

In business that concerns not thee ! 
For when to future years thou extend'st thy cares, 

Thou deal'st in other men's affairs. 

VII. 
Even aged men, as if they truly were 

Children again, for age prepare, 
Provisions for long travail they design 

In the last point of their short line. 

VIII. 

Wisely the ant against poor winter hoards 
The stock which summer's wealth affords, 

In grasshoppers, that must at autumn die, 
How vain were such an industry. 

IX. 

Of power and honour the deceitful light 
Might half excuse our cheated sight, 

If it of life the whole small time would stay, 
And be our sunshine all the day. 



168 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

X. 

Like lightning that, begot but in a cloud, 
Though shining bright, and speaking loud, 

Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race, 
And where it gilds, it wounds the place. 

XI. 

Oh, scene of fortune, which dost fair appear 
Only to men that stand not near. 

Proud poverty, that tinsel bravery wears, 
And like a rainbow, painted tears. 

XII. 

Be prudent, and the shore in prospect keep, 
In a weak boat trust not the deep. 

Placed beneath envy, above envying rise ; 
Pity great men, great things despise. 

XIII. 

The wise example of the heavenly lark, 
Thy fellow poet, Cowley, mark, 

Above the clouds let thy proud music sound, 
Thy humble nest build on the ground. 



169 



THE DANGEB OP PKOCKASTX- 

NATION. 

A letter to Mr. S. L. 

I am glad that you approve and applaud my design 
of withdrawing myself from all tumult and busi- 
ness of the world and consecrating the little rest 
of my time to those studies to which nature had 
so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune 
like a step-mother has so long detained me. But 
nevertheless, you say — which But is aerugo mera, a 
rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. 
But, you say, you would advise me not to precipitate 
that resolution, but to stay a while longer with 
patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such 
an estate as might afford me, according to the saying 
of that person whom you and I love very much, 
and would believe as soon as another man, cum, 
dignitate otiwm. This were excellent advice to 



170 cowley's essays. 

Josh.ua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there's 
no fooling with life when it is once turned beyond 
forty. The seeking for a fortune then is but a 
desperate after game, it is a hundred to one if a 
man fling two sixes and recover all ; especially if 
his hand be no luckier than mine. There is some 
help for all the defects of fortune, for if a man 
cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may 
have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epi- 
curus writes a letter to Idomeneus, who was then a 
very powerful, wealthy, and it seems bountiful 
person, to recommend to him, who had made so 
many men rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, 
whom he desired to be made a rich man too : 
But I entreat you that you would not do it just 
the same way as you have done to many less 
deserving persons, but in the most gentlemanly 
manner of obliging him, which is not to add any- 
thing to his estate, but to take something from his 
desires. The sum of this is, that for the uncertain 
hopes of some conveniences we ought not to defer 
the execution of a work that is necessary, especially 



DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. 171 

when tile use of those things which we would stay 
for may otherwise be supplied, but the loss of time 
never recovered. Nay, further yet, though we were 
sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, though 
we were sure of getting never so much by con- 
tinuing the game, yet when the light of life is so 
near going out, and ought to be so precious, Le jeu 
ne vaut pas la chandelle, the play is not worth 
the expense of the candle. After having been long 
tossed in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and 
we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us 
to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers 
and topgallants ; utere velis, totos pande sinus. A 
gentleman in our late civil wars, when his quarters 
were beaten up by the enemy, was taken prisoner and 
lost his life afterwards, only by staying to put on 
a band and adjust his periwig. He would escape 
like a person of quality, or not at all, and died 
the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. I 
think your counsel of festina lente is as ill to a 
man who is flying from the world, as it would 
have been to that unfortunate well-bred gentleman, 



172 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

who was so cautious as not to fly un decently 
from his enemies, and therefore I prefer Horace's 
advice before yours. 

Sapere aude ; incipe. 

Begin : the getting out of doors is the greatest 
part of the journey. Varro teaches us that Latin 
proverb, For tarn itineri longissimam esse. But to 
return to Horace, 

Sapere aude ; 

Incipe. Vivendi qui recte prorogat horam 
Rusticus expectat dum labitur amnis ; at ille 
Labitur % et labetur in omne volubilis cevum. 

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ; 

He who defers the work from day to day, 

Does on a river's bank expecting stay, 

Till the whole stream which stopped him should be gone, 

That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. 

Caesar (the man of expedition above all others) 
was so far from this folly, that whensoever in a 
journey he was to cross any river, he never went 
one foot out of his way for a bridge, or a ford, or a 



DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. 173 

ferry ; but flung himself into it immediately, and 
swam over ; and this is the course we ought to 
imitate if we meet with any stops in our way to 
happiness. Stay till the waters are low, stay till 
some boats come by to transport you, stay till a 
bridge be built for you ; you had even as good stay 
till the river be quite past. Persius (who, you 
used to say, you do not know whether he be a good 
poet or no, because you cannot understand him, 
and whom, therefore, I say, I know to be not a 
good poet) has an odd expression of these procras- 
tinations, which, methinks, is full of fancy. 

Jam eras liestemum consumjjswms, ecce aliud eras 
egerit hos annos. 

Our yesterday's to-morrow now is gone, 
And still a new to-morrow does come on ; 
We by to-morrows draw up all our store, 
Till the exhausted well can yield no more. 

And now, I think, I am even with you, for your 
otium cum dignitate and festina lente, and three or 
four other more of your new Latin sentences : if I 



174 COWLEY^S ESSAYS. 

should draw upon you all my forces out of Seneca 
and Plutarch upon this subject, I should over- 
whelm you, but I leave those as triarii for your 
next charges. I shall only give you now a light 
skirmish out of an epigrammatist, your special 
good friend, and so, vale. 



Mart. Lib. 5, Ep. 59. 
To-morrow you will live, you always cry ; 
In what far country does this morrow lie, 
That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive 1 
Beyond the Indies does this morrow live? 
'Tis so far-fetched, this morrow, that I fear 
'Twill be both very old and very dear. 
To-morrow I will live, the fool does say ; 
To-day itselfs too late, the wise lived yesterday. 



Mart. Lib. 2, Ep. 90. 
"Wonder not, sir (you who instruct the town 
In the true wisdom of the sacred gown), 
That I make haste to live, and cannot hold 



DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. 175 

Patiently out, till I grow rich and old. 

Life for delays and doubts no time does give, 

None ever yet made haste enough to live. 

Let him defer it, whose preposterous care 

Omits himself, and reaches to his heir, 

Who does his father's bounded stores despise, 

And whom his own, too, never can suffice : 

My humble thoughts no glittering roofs require, 

Or rooms that shine with ought be constant fire. 

We ill content the avarice of my sight 

With the fair gildings of reflected light : 

Pleasures abroad, the sport of Nature yields 

Her living fountains, and her smiling fields : 

And then at home, what pleasure is 't to see 

A little cleanly, cheerful family 1 

Which if a chaste wife crown, no less in her 

Than fortune, I the golden mean prefer. 

Too noble, nor too wise, she should not be, 

No, nor too rich, too fair, too fond of me. 

Thus let my life slide silently away, 

With sleep all night, and quiet all the day. 



176 



OF MYSELF. 



It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of 
himself ; it grates his own heart to say anything of 
disparagement and the reader's ears to hear any- 
thing of praise for him. There is no danger from 
me of offending him in this kind ; neither my mind, 
nor my body, nor my fortune allow me any 
materials for that vanity. It is sufficient for my 
own contentment that they have preserved me 
from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defec- 
tive side. But besides that, I shall here speak of 
myself only in relation to the subject of these 
precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby 
to fall into the contempt than rise up to the esti- 
mation of most people. As far as my memory can 
returi; back into my past life, before I knew or 
was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, 
or business of it were, the natural affections of my 
soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, 



OF MYSELF. 177 

as some plants are said to turn away from others, 
by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves and 
inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I 
was a very young boy at school, instead of running 
about on holidays and playing with my fellows, I 
was wont to steal from them and walk into the 
fields, either alone with a book, or with some one 
companion, if I could find any of the same temper. 
I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, 
that my masters could never prevail on me, by any 
persuasions or encouragements, to learn without 
book the common rules of grammar, in which they 
dispensed with me alone, because they found I 
made a shift to do the usual exercises out of my 
own reading and observation. That I was then of 
the same mind as I am now (which I confess I 
wonder at myself) may appear by the latter end of 
an ode which I made when I was but thirteen 
years old, and which was then printed with many 
other verses. The beginning of it is boyish, but of 
this part which I here set down, if a very little were 
corrected, I should hardly now be much ashamed. 



• 



178 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

IX. 

This only grant me, that my means may lie 
Too low for envy, for contempt too high. 

Some honour I would have, 
Not from great deeds, but good alone. 
The unknown are better than ill known. 

Rumour can ope the grave ; 
Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends 
Not on the number, but the choice of friends. 

x. 

Books should, not business, entertain the light, 
And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night. 

My house a cottage, more 
Than palace, and should fitting be 
For all my use, no luxury. 

My garden painted o'er 
With Nature's hand, not Art's ; and pleasures yield, 
Horace might envy in his Sabine field. 

XI. 

Thus would I double my life's fading space, 
For he that runs it well twice runs his race. 



OP MYSELF. 179 

And in this true delight, 
These unbought sports, this happy state, 
I would not fear, nor wish my fate, 

But boldly say each night, 
To-morrow let my sun his beams display 
Or in clouds hide them — I have lived to-day. 

You may see by it I was even then acquainted 
with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of 
Horace), and perhaps it was the immature and 
immoderate love of them which stamped first, or 
rather engraved, these characters in me. They 
were like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, 
which with the tree still grow proportionably. 
But how this love came to be produced in me so 
early is a hard question. I believe I can tell the 
particular little chance that filled my head first 
with such chimes of verse as have never since left 
ringing there. For I remember when I began to 
read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was 
wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by 
what accident, for she herself never in her life read 



180 cowley's essays. 

any book but of devotion), but there was wont to 
lie Spenser's works ; this I happened to fall upon, 
and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the 
knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, 
which I found everywhere there (though my under- 
standing had little to do with all this) ; and by de- 
grees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of 
the numbers, so that I think I had read him all 
over before I was twelve years old, and was thus 
made a poet as immediately as a child is made an 
eunuch. With these affections of mind, and my 
heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the uni- 
versity, but was soon torn from thence by that 
violent public storm which would suffer nothing to 
stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even 
from the princely cedars to me, the hyssop. Yet I 
had as good fortune as could have befallen me in 
such a tempest ; for I was cast by it into the 
family of one of the best persons, and into the 
court of one of the best princesses of the world. 
Now though I was here engaged in ways most con- 
trary to the original design of my life, that is, into 



OP MYSELF. 181 

much company, and no small business, and into a 
daily sight of greatness, both militant and 
triumphant, for that was the state then of the 
English and French Courts ; yet all this was so far 
from altering my opinion, that it only added the 
confirmation of reason to that which was before 
but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the 
paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it ; 
and that beauty which I did not fall in love with 
when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like 
to bewitch or entice me when I saw that it was 
adulterate. I met with several great persons, 
whom I liked very well, but could not perceive 
that any part of their greatness was to be liked or 
desired, no more than I would be glad or content 
to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which 
rid safely and bravely in it. A storm would not 
agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. 
Though I was in a crowd of as good company as 
could be found anywhere, though I was in business 
of great and honourable trust, though I ate at the 
best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for 



182 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 

present subsistence that ought to Le desired by a 
man of my condition in banishment and public dis- 
tresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my 
old schoolboy's wish in a copy of verses to thf 
same effect. 

Well then ; I now do plainly see, 

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, etc. 

i 

And I never then proposed to myself any other 
advantage from His Majesty's happy restoration, 
but the getting into some moderately convenient 
retreat in the country, which I thought in that 
case I might easily have compassed, as well as 
some others, with no greater probabilities or pre- 
tences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But 
I had before written a shrewd prophecy against 
myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the 
truth, though not in the elegance of it. 

Thou, neither great at court nor in the war, 

Nor at th' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling 

bar ; 
Content thyself with the small barren praise, 
Which neglected verse does raise, etc. 



OF MYSELF. 183 

However, by the failing of the forces which I 
had expected, I did not quit the design which I 
had resolved on ; I cast myself into it A corps perdu, 
without making capitulations or taking counsel of 
fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to 
his soul, " Take thy ease " : I met presently not 
only with many little encumbrances and impedi- 
ments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune 
to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an 
emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent 
nor alter my course. Xon ego perfidum dixi sacra- 
mentum. Nothing shall separate me from a mistress 
which I have loved so long, and Lave now at last 
married, though she neither has brought me a rich 
portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped 
from her. 

Xec vos, dulcissima mundi 



Nomina, vos Masce, libertas, otia, libri, 
Hortiqvr sylvwqnt* anim<i remanente 



Nor by me e'er shall you, 
You of all names the sweetest, and the best, 



184 cowley's essays. 

You Muses, books, and liberty, and rest ; 
You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be, 
As long as life itself forsakes not me. 

But this is a very petty ejaculation. Because I 
have concluded all the other chapters with a copy 
of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last. 



Martial, Lib. 10, Ep. 47. 

Vitam quce faciunt beatiorem, etc. 

Since, dearest friend, 'tis your desire to see 
A true receipt of happiness from me ; 
These are the chief ingredients, if not all : 
Take an estate neither too great nor small, 
Which quantum sufficit the doctors call; 
Let this estate from parents' care descend: 
The getting it too much of life does spend. 
Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be 
A fair encouragement for industry. 
Let constant fires the winter's fury tame, 
And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame. 
Thee to the town let never suit at law, 



OF MYSELF. 185 

And rarely, very rarely, business draw. 
Thy active mind in equal temper keep, 
In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep. 
Let exercise a vigorous health maintain, 
Without which all the composition's vain. 
In the same weight prudence and innocence take 
Ana of each does the just mixture make. 
But a few friendships wear, and let them be 
By Nature and by Fortune fit for thee. 
Instead of art and luxury in food, 
Let mirth and freedom make thy table good. 
If any cares into thy daytime creep, 
At night, without wines, opium, let them sleep. 
Let rest, which Nature does to darkness wed, 
And not lust, recommend to thee thy bed, 
Be satisfied, and pleased with what thou art ; 
Act cheerfully and well the allotted part. 
Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, 
And neither fear, nor wish the approaches of the 
last. 



186 cowley's essays. 



Martial, Lib. 10. Ep. 96. 

Me, who have lived so long among the great, 
You wonder to hear talk of a retreat : 
And a retreat so distant, as may show 
]STo thoughts of a return when once I go. 
Give me a country, how remote so e'er, 
Where happiness a moderate rate does bear, 
Where poverty itself in plenty flows 
And all the solid use of riches knows. 
The ground about the house maintains it there, 
The house maintains the ground about it here. 
Here even hunger's dear, and a full board 
Devours the vital substance of the lord. 
The land itself does there the feast bestow, 
The land itself must here to market go. 
Three or four suits one winter here does waste, 
One suit does there three or four winters last. 
Here every frugal man must oft be cold, 
And little lukewarm fires are to you sold. 



OF MYSELF. 187 

There fire's an element as cheap and free 
Almost as any of the other three. 
Stay you then here, and live among the great, 
Attend their sports, and at their tables eat. 
When all the bounties here of men you score : 
The Place's bounty there, shall give me more. 



188 cowley's essays. 



EPITAPHIUM YIYI ATJCTORIS. 



Hie, viator \ sub Lare parvulo 
Couleius hie est conditus, hie jacet ; 
Defunctus humani laboris 
Sorte, supervacudque vita, 

Non indecora pauperie nitens, 
Et non inerti nobilis otio, 

Vanoque dilectis popetto 
Divitiis animosus hostis. 

Possis ut ilium dicer e mortuum, 
En terra jam nunc quantula sufficit I 
Exempta sit curis, viator ; 
Terra sit ilia levis, precare. 

Hie sparge flores, sparge breves rosas, 
Nam vita gaudet mortua fioribus, 
Herbisque odoratis corona 

Vatis adhuc cinerem calentem. 



EPITAPH OF THE LIVING AUTHOR. 189 

[Translation.'] 
EPITAPH OF THE LIVING- AUTHOR. 



O wayfarer, beneath his household shrine 
Here Cowley lies, closed in a little den ; 

A life too empty and his lot combine 

To give him rest from all the toils of men. 

Not shining with unseemly shows of want, 

Nor noble with the indolence of ease ; 
Fearless of spirit as a combatant 

With mob-loved wealth and all its devotees. 

That you may fairly speak of him as dead, 
Behold how little earth contents him now ! 

Pray, wayfarer, that all his cares be fled, 
And that the earth lie lightly on his brow. 

Strew flowers here, strew roses soon to perish, 
For the dead life joys yi all flowers that blow; 

Crown with sweet herbs, bank blossoms high, to cherish 
The poet's ashes that are y# aglow. 

Henry Morley. 



190 cowley's essays. 

A FEW NOTES. 



Page 15. Fertur equis, &c. From the close of Virgil's first Georgic : 
said of horses in a chariot race, 

Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threatening cries they fear, 
But force along the trembling charioteer. 

Dryden's translation, 
„ 16. En Romanos, &c. Virgil, iEneid I., when Jove says, 
The people Romans call, the city Rome, 
To them no bounds of empire I assign, 
Nor term of years to their immortal line. 

Dryden's Virgil. 
„ 18. fi Laveer with every wind." Laveer is an old sea term for 
working the ship against the wind. Lord Clarendon used 
its noun, " the schoolmen are the best laveerers in the 
world, and would have taught a ship to catch the wind 
that it should have gained half and half, though it had 
been contrary." s 

„ 24. Amatorem trecentce Pirithoum cohibent catenas. Horace's Ode, 
Bk. IV., end of ode 4. Three hundred chains bind the 
lover, Pirithous : 

Wrath waits on sin, three hundred chains 
Pirithous bind in endless pains. Creech's Translation. 
,, 25. Aliena negotia, &c. From Horace's Satires, sixth of Book II. 
„ 25. Dors, cockchafers. 
„ 26. Pan huper sebastos Lord over All 

„ 27. Perditur hose inter misero Lux. Horace, Satires, II., 6. This 
whole Satire is in harmony with the spirit of Cowley's 
Essays. 
„ 29. A slave in Satumalibus. In the Saturnalia, when Roman 

slaves had licence to disport themselves. 
t , 29. Unciatim, &c. Terence's *Phornjio, Act I., scene 1, in the 
opening : " All that this poor fellow has, by starving him- 
self, bit by bit, with much ado, scraped together out of his 
pitiful allowance— (must go at one swoop, people never 
considering the price it cost him the getting)." Eachard's 
Terence. 



NOTES. 191 

Page 30. KaKd0r)p(a, &c. Paul to Titus, "The Cretans are always 
liars, evil beasts, slow bellies." 

,, 31. Quisnam igitur, &c. Horace's Satires, II., 7. " Who then is 
free? The wise man, who has absolute rule over himself." 

,, 31. Oenomaus, father of Hippodameia, would give her only to 
the suitor who could overcome him in a chariot race. 
Suitors whom he could overtake he killed. He killed him 
self when outstripped by Pelops, whom a god assisted, or 
according to one version, a man who took the nails out ol 
Oenomaus* chariot wheels, and brought him down with a 
crash. 

„ 45. Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus. Never less alone than 
when alone. 

„ 47. Sic ego, &c. From Tibullus, IV., 13. 

„ 51. quis me gelidis, &c. From the Second Book of Virgil's 
Georgics, in a passage expressing the poet's wish : 
Ye sacred Muses, with whose beauty fired, 
My soul is ravished and my brain inspired ; 
Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear, 
Would you your poet's first petition hear : 
Give me the ways of wandering stars to know ; 
The depths of Heaven above, and Earth below ; 
Teach me, &c. 

But if my heavy blood restrain the flight 
Of my free soul aspiring to the height 
Of Nature, and unclouded fields of light : 
My next desire is, void of care and strife, 
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life. 
A country cottage near a crystal flood, 
A winding valley and a lofty wood ; 
Some god conduct me to the sacred shades 
Where bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids, 
Or lift me high to Hsemus hilly crown, 
Or in the vales of Tempe lay me down, 
Or lead me to some solitary place, 
And cover my retreat from human race. 

Dryden's translation* 
„ 1 56, Nam neque divitibus. Horace's Epistles, I., 18. 



iy^ oowley's essays. 

Page 58. Tankerwoman, "water-bearer, one who carried water from 
the conduits." 

„ 60. Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander. Domitian is said to 
have given a consulship to h s horse Incitatus. 

„ 60. The glory of Cato and Anstides. See the parallel lives in 
Plutarch. 

„ 64. fortunatos nimium, &c. Men all too happy, and they 
knew their good. 

„ 70. Hinc atque Mnc. From Virgil's iEneid, Book I. 
Page 75. Mr. Hartlib. . . . if the gentleman be yet alive. Samuel 
Hartlib, a public -spirited man of a rich Polish family, 
came to England in 1640. He interested himself in educa- 
tion and other subjects, as well as agriculture. In 1645 
he edited a treatise of Flemish Agriculture that added 
greatly to the knowledge of English farmers, and thereby 
to the wealth of England. He spent a large fortune 
' among us for the public good. Cromwell recognised his 
services by a pension of £300 a year, which ceased at the 
Restoimtion, and Hartlib then fell into such obscurity 
that Cowley could not say whether he were alive or no. 

„ 75. Nescio qua, &c. Ovid. Epistles from Pontus. 

„ 76. Pariter, &c. Ovid's Fasti, Book I. Referring to the happy 
souls who first looked up to the stars, Ovid suggests that 
in like manner they must have lifted their heads above 
the vices and the jests of man. Cowley has here turned 
"locis" into "jocis." 

„ 80. Ut nos in Epistolis scribendis adjuvet. That he might help 
us in writing letters. 

„ 81. Qui quid sit pulchrum, &c. Who tells more fully than 
Chrysippus or Crantor what is fair what is foul, what 
useful and what not. 

„ 92. Swerd of bacon, skin of bacon. First English sweard. So 
green sward is green surface covering. 

„ 100. The Country Life is a translation from Cowley's own Latin 
Poem on Plants. 

„ 105. Evelyn had dedicated to Cowley his Kalendarium Hortense. 



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